
Copyright]^^, 



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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



r^ 




WASHINGTON IRVING. 

It is not only like Irving, but like his books ; and, though he 
looks as his books read, and looks like the name of his cottage, — 
Sunnyside, — and looks like what the world thinks of him, yet a 
painter might have missed this look, and still have made what many 
would consider a likeness. He sits leaning his head on his hand, 
with the genial, unconscious, courtly composure of expression that 
he habitually wears ; and still there is visible the couchant humor 
and philosophic inevitableness of perception which form the strong 
undercurrent of his genius. The happy temper and the strong 
intellect of Irving ; the joyously indolent man and the arousably 
brilliant author, are both there. — TV. P. Willis. 



STije acatiemg Series of lEngltgt) Classics 



WASHINGTON IRVING 



LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH 



WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES 

BY 

R. ADELAIDE WITHAM 

CLASSICAL HIGH SCHOOL, PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND 



-OOJ:®::;©*- 



ALLYN AND BACON 

Boston anti Cijicago 



OCT 4 1904 
c2 Oooyrf eht Emrv 

CLASS «^XXo. No. 

COPY B 



^sS 



COPYRIGHT, 1904, BY 
ALLYN AND BACON. 



7^34^3 



" Z\ ^ X a 



1* 



> 



EDITOR'S PREFACE. 



In preparing Irving's Life of Goldsmith for use in the schools, 
the editor has tried to remember that the book is prescribed for 
reading and not for exhaustive study. So full is the text, how- 
ever, of allusions to persons, places, and events not within the 
range of the pupil's knowledge, and often too obscure to be worth 
more than a passing attention, that the making of notes seemed 
inevitable. Some matters have been explained which the pupil 
might find for hiniself in books of reference. This is, of course, 
a pedagogical heresy ; but assault and battery upon the grace and 
charm of this biography of a "lovable, garret-haunting Bohe- 
mian" would seem a literary crime which the editor does not 
care to aid and abet. 

The suggestive notes and topics at the end of this edition, it is 
hoped, may stimulate the pupil to reflect a little as he reads and 
to note the contribution of each chapter to the whol^^ork. 

Biographies of Irving are always within the reach of classes. 
Therefore, instead of a dilution of what has already been written 
by others, an arrangernent of topics has been made with refer- 
ences to the standard life of Irving by his nephew, Pierre Irving. 
A shorter biography is that by Charles Dudley Warner. Inter- 
esting appreciations of Irving may be found in Howells's My 
Literary Passions, Curtis's Literary and Social Essays, Barrett 
Wendell's Literary History of America, and Walter C. Bronson's 
History of American Literature. Thackeray's tribute to Irving in 
Nil Nisi Bonum of his Roundabout Papers, ought to be read 
without fail. 

ill 



IV 



editor's p be face. 



It is a disadvantage to a teacher to be obliged to present to a 
class, recitation by recitation, a book whose beauty lies in its 
loose, rambling structure. To suggest some sort of unity for 
each assignment, the following arrangement is submitted : — 



Chapter 

I-II. 

iii-y. 

VI-IX. 

x-xi. 

XII-XIV. 

XV-XVII. 

XVIII-XIX. 
XX-XXII. 

XXIII-XXVIII. 



XXIX-XXXIV. 

xxxy-xxxvi. 

XXXVII-XXXVIII. 

XXXIX-XLI. 
XLII-XLV. 



Birth, Boyhood, and Education. 

Attempts to choose a Profession. 

Makeshifts at gaining a Livelihood. 

Early Struggles in London. 

Early Successes in London. 

First Introduction to Dr. Johnson and the 

Literary Club. 
The Discovery, Publication, and Reception of 

The Vicar of Wakefield. 
Goldsmith in London Society. 
The Ups and Downs of the Year 1767-1768. 
The Presentation of The Good-natured Man. 
" Burning the Candle at Both Ends." 
The Publication of The Deserted Village. 
The Jessamy Bride. 
Goldsmith in Paris. 

Inferior Literary Work between 1770 and 1772. 
Anecdotes of Goldsmith and his Friends. 
Goldsmith at the Mercy of the Club. 
A Holiday in the Country. 
The Presentation of She Stoops to Conquer. 
Literary Jealousies in Goldsmith's Day. 
Johnson^ Boswell, and Goldsmith. 
"Toil without Hope: Dissipation without 

Gayety." 
The Writing of Betaliation. 
The Death of Goldsmith. 
Memorials to Goldsmith. 
A Summary of the Causes of his Successes and 

Failures. 



It is hoped that the pupil may not be required to learn any- 
thing which the editor has put into this volume ; only that he 
may be introduced a little more cordially, by means of the notes, 
to two delightful personalities, that of Irving and that of Gold- 
smith. 



CONTENTS. 



The Works of Irving, and American Literature contem 

PORARY WITH IrVING ..... 



Introduction : Life of Washington Irving . 
Irving's Preface to the Life of Goldsmith 
Contents of the Life of Goldsmith 
OLIVER GOLDSMITH . . ... 
A Word about Irving's Life of Goldsmith . 



Notes 



Suggestive Questions and Topics 



PAGE 

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VI 



INTRODUCTION. 



LIFE OF WASHINGTON IRVING (1783-1859). 

Birth. 

New York, April 3, 1783. 

Named for George Washington (I, i).i 

Parents. 

Father : William Irving, born of a long line of Scotch Covenanters. 
Mother : Sarah Saunders of Cornwall. 

They were married in 1761 and embarked for America in 1763 
(I, II). 

Education. 

At four years of age sent to a dame school, where, he says, 

" I made little progress beyond the alphabet." 
Later attended Romaine's School, (See anecdotes in I, ii.) 
Did not have a college course, so his education stopped at sixteen. 

Study of Law. 

At sixteen entered a New York law office. 

"His course here was marked by remarkable proficiency in 
belles-lettres, but very slender advancement in the dry tech- 
nicalities of the practice " (I, n). 

First Voyage up the Hudson. 

The first author to describe the beauty of the river. Read Irving' s 
account of his trip (I, ii), and note its resemblance to passages 
in The Sketch-Book. 

Earliest Publication, 1802. 

Contributions to The Morning Chronicle, signed "Jonathan Old- 
style." 

Predominating characteristic of these sketches was whimsical 
humor. 

1 References in parentheses are to volumes and chapters of Pierre Irving' s Life of 
Irving. 

vii 



Vlll LIFE OF WASHINGTON IRVING. 

Frontier Travels in 1803. 

Important as furnishing material for future writings. 
See extracts from his journal at this time (I, iii). 

First Journey Abroad, 1804. 

Undertaken on account of his health. 

Travels through France, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, and England. 
(For anecdotes and adventures, read the letters in I, iv-ix.) 
The interest here centres in the adventures attendant upon 
European travel in those days, upon the narrow escapes of 
Irving from romantic dangers, upon the honors paid to him by 
great men whom he met, and upon the style of these accounts, 
which are a prophecy of The Sketch-Book and The Alhambra. 

Life in New York, 1 806-1814. 

Foundation of the club known as " The Nine Worthies " (I, xi). 

Admission to the Bar, 1806. 

Publication of Salmagundi^ 1807-1808. Reprinted in London, 
1811. 

Romance of Irving and Mathilda Hoffman (I, xiv). 

Publication of The History of New York, by " Diedrich Knicker- 
bocker," 1809 (I, xv). 

Editor of Analectic Magazine, 1813-1814. 

Appointed aide-de-camp to Governor Tompkins at end of war with 
England, and given the title of Colonel (I, xx). 

Life Abroad, 1815-1831 (ist period). 

1815. In London, attending to the interests of the publishing firm 
of P. Irving & Co. 
Preparing a second edition of the Knickerbocker History, 

with designs by "Washington Allston. 
Received everywhere as an American writer of rank 
(I, xxi-xxiii). 

1817. Travels through Scotland (I, xxiv). 

1818. Failure of firm of P. Irving & Co., and Irving's decision to 

devote himself to literature. 

1819. Publication, in New York, of The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey 

Crayon (I, xxvi). 

1820. The Sketch-Book published in London (I, xxvii). 
1820-1821. Goes to Paris (II, i-ii). 

Begins Tales of a Traveller. 
Begins Bracehridge Hall. 

1821. Returns to England for coronation of George IV (II, 11). 



LIFE OF WASHINGTON IRVING. IX 

1822. Publication of Bracehridge Hall (II, iv). 

Travels in Germany and Austria, spending the winter in 
Dresden (II, v-viii). 
1822-1824. Lives in Paris (II, ix-x). 

Attempts to remodel French plays for the English stage. 

Prepares a second volume of The Sketch-Book. 

At vi^ork upon Tales of a Traveller. 

1824. Keturns to London (II, xii). 
Publishes Tales of a Traveller. 

1825. Lives in Paris and Bordeaux (II, xiii). 

Working on American Essays, which were never printed. 
1826-1827. Goes to Spain as attach^ of the American Legation. 
Working on the Life of Columbus. 
Sketching the Conquest of Granada (II, xiv). 

1828. Publication of Life and Voyages of Columbus. 
Travelling through Spain. 

Working on Conquest of Granada (II, xv-xvi). 

1829. Publication of Conquest of Granada (II, xx). 
Resides part of the year in the Alhambra (II, xxiv). 
Appointed Secretary of Legation to London (II, xxiii). 
Arrives in London in October. 

1830. Year spent in London. 

• Receives King's Medal from the Royal Academy. 
Degree of LL.D. conferred by Oxford (II, xxv). 

1831. Resigns secretaryship of Legation to London to devote him- 

self more closely to literature (II, xxvi). 

Life in New York, 1832-1842. 

1832. Returns to New York after an absence of seventeen years. 
Publication of The Alhambra or TJie Spanish Sketch-Book 

(HI, I). 
1832-1833. Journeys through the Western and Southern States 

(III, II). 
1835. Publication of Tour on the Prairies (III, iii). 
Purchase of Sunnyside. 
Publication of Astoria (III, iv). 

1837. Publication of Adventures of Captain Bonneville (III, v). 
Visit of Louis Napoleon at Sunnyside. 

Declines mayoralty of New York City. 

Declines appointment to the Cabinet of Van Buren. 

1838. Begins a history of Mexico, but surrenders the theme to 

Prescott (III, vi). 



X LIFE OF WASHINGTON IRVING. 

1839. Regular contributor to the Knickerbocker Magazine. 

1840. Publishes biographical sketch of Goldsmith for Harper's 

Library (III, vii). 

Life Abroad, 1842-1846 (2d period). 

1842. Appointed Minister to Spain through the influence of 

Daniel Webster. Accompanied by Alexander Hamilton 

as Secretary of the Legation (III, ix). 
Reception at Court of St. James (III, x). 
Established in Madrid in July. (See letter describing his 

reception by the Queen of Spain, in III, xi.) 
Working on Life of Washington. 

1843. See letters (in III, xiii-xv), giving delightful sketches of his 

life in Madrid, of the royal family, and of the insurrec- 
tions and the dangers. 
Excursion to Versailles and Paris for health (III, xvi). 

" My heart yearns for home; and as I have now probably 
turned the last corner in life, and my remaining years are 
growing scanty in number, I begrudge every one that I am 
obliged to pass separated from my cottage and my kindred." 

1844. See letters (in III, xvii-xix), describing the political excite- 

ments in Madrid, in which Irving played an important 

part. 
Temporary leave of absence on account of health, and 

excursion to Paris and London. 
Returns to Paris and visits King Louis Philippe. (Read 

letters in III, xx.) 

1845. Returns to Madrid. (Read routine of life here, in letters 

dated March 27, 1845, and August 9, 1845 ; III, xxi.) 
Goes to Paris and resigns his ministry to Madrid. 

1846. Visits London on diplomatic business. 
Returns to Madrid to await successor. 

Fond leave-taking of the Queen of Spain (III, xxii). 
Sails from London for New York in September. 

" The evening of life is fast drawing upon me ; still I hope 
to get back among my friends while yet there is a little 
sunshine left." 

Last Years at Sunnyside. 

1847-1848. Beautifying his home at Sunnyside (IV, i). 

"The little old-fashioned stone mansion, all made up of 
gable ends, and as full of angles and corners as an old 
cocked hat." 



LIFE OF WASHINGTON IRVING. xi 

Revising liis works for the publication of a complete edi- 
tion. 

1849. Publication of Life of Goldsmith (IV, iii). 
Publication of Mahomet and his Successors, Vol I. 

1850. Publication of Mahomet and his Successors, Vol, II. 

" If I only had ten years more of life ! I never felt more 
able to write! I might not conceive as I did in earlier days, 
when I had more romance of feeling, but I could execute 
with more rapidity and freedom." 

1853. Excursion to Washington (IV, vii). Meets Thackeray by 
chance on the train. 

"I was at the President's levee. ... I met with many 
interesting people there ; but I had no chance of enjoying 
conversation with any of them, . . . for I had to shake 
hands with man, woman, and child. From the levee I was 
hurried away to a ball, . . . where the system of hand- 
shaking began again and I retreated and came home." 

Celebration of seventieth birthday (IV, viii). 

" I used to think that a man of seventy must have sur- 
vived everything worth living for ; that with him the silver 
cord must be loosed, the wheel broken at the cistern; that 
all desire must fail and the grasshopper become a burden. 
Yet here I find myself, unconscious of the withering influ- 
ence of age, still strong and active, my sensibilities alive^ 
and my social affections in full vigor. 

" Strange that a harp of a thousand strings 
Should keep in tune so long! " 

Working on Life of Washington. 

Excursion to Baltimore to examine the Washington relics 
and papers kept there. (See amusing account of his re- 
ception at the Irving House in New York ; IV, xix.) 
1855. Publication of WolferVs Boost (IV, xi). 

Publication of Life of Washington, Vol. I. 
1856-1859. Continual struggle against breaking health. 

" I do not fear death, but I would like to go down with all 
sail set." 

(See IV, xiii-xviii, which give more of Irving's real self 
than all the rest of the biography.) 
Publication of Life of Washington, Vols. II- V. 
Extract from a letter from the historian Prescott to Irving, 
upon the publication of Vol. IV : — 



Sii LIFE OF WASHINGTON IRVING. 

"Hitherto we have only seen him [Washington] as a sort 
of marble Colossus, full of moral greatness, but without the 
touch of humanity that would give him interest. You have 
known how to give the marble flesh color, that brings it to 
the resemblance of life. No one — at least, I am sure no 
American — could read the last volume without finding 
pretty often a blur upon the page." 
Death. 

November 28, 1859, at Sunnyside (IV, xviii). 

Extract from the tribute of George William Curtis : — 

'* On the day of his burial, unable to reach Tarry town in 
time for the funeral, I came down the shore of the river he 
loved. As we darted and wound along, the Catskills were 
draped in sober gray mist, not hiding them, but wreathing 
and folding and lingering, as if the hills were heavy with 
sympathetic, but not unrelieved, gloom. Yet far away 
toward the south, the bank on which his home lay, was 
Sunnyside still, for the sky was cloudless and soft with 
serene sunshine. I could not but remember his last words 
to me, more than a year ago, when his book was finished, 
and his health was failing : ' I am getting ready to go ; I am 
shutting up my doors and windows.' And I could not but 
feel that they were all open now, and bright with the light 
of eternal morning." 



lEVING'S PREFACE TO LIFE OF GOLDSMITH. 



In the course of a revised edition of my works I have come to 
a biographical sketch of Goldsmith, published several years since. 
It was written hastily, as introductory to a selection from his 
writings ; and, though the facts contained in it were collected 
from various sources, I was chiefly indebted for them to the 
voluminous work of Mr. James Prior, who had collected and 
collated the most minute particulars of the poet's history with 
unwearied research and scrupulous fidelity; but had rendered 
them, as I thought, in a form too cumbrous and overlaid with 
details and disquisitions, and matters uninteresting to the general 
reader. 

When I was about of late to revise my biographical sketch, 
preparatory to republication, a volume was put into my hands, 
recently given to the public by Mr. John Forster, of the Inner 
Temple, who, likewise availing himself of the labors of the inde- 
fatigable Prior, and of a few new lights since evolved, has pro- 
duced a biography of the poet, executed with a spirit, a feeling, 
a grace, and an eloquence, that leave nothing to be desired. 
Indeed it would have been presumption in me to undertake the 
subject after it had been thus felicitously treated, did I not stand 
committed by my previous sketch. That sketch now appeared 
too meagre and insufficient to satisfy public demand ; yet it had 
to take its place in the revised series of my works unless some- 
thing more satisfactory could be substituted. Under these cir- 



2 IRVING' S PREFACE TO LIFE OF GOLDSMITH. 

cumstances I have again taken up the subject, and gone into it 
with more fulness than formerly, omitting none of the facts which 
I considered illustrative of the life and character of the poet, and 
giving them in as graphic a style as I could command. Still, the 
hurried manner in which I have had to do this amidst the press- 
ure of other claims on my attention, and with the press dogging 
at my heels, has prevented me from giving some parts of the 
subject the thorough handling I could have wished. Those who 
would like to see it treated still more at large, with the addition 
of critical disquisitions and the advantage of collateral facts, 
would do well to refer themselves to Mr. Prior's circumstantial 
volumes, or to the elegant and discursive pages of Mr. Forster. 

For my own part, I can only regret my shortcomings in what 
to me is a labor of love; for it is a tribute of gratitude to the 
memory of an author whose writings were the delight of my 
childhood, and have been a source of enjoyment to me throughout 
life ; and to whom, of all others, I may address the beautiful 
apostrophe of Dante to Virgil, — 

Tu se' lo mio maestro, e '1 mio autore : 
Tu se' solo colui, da cu' io tolsi 
Lo bello stile, che m' ha fatto onore. 



W. I. 



SUNNYSIDE, Aug. 1, 1849. 



CONTENTS OF LIFE OF GOLDSMITH. 



CHAPTER I. 

PAGE 

Birth and Parentage. — Characteristics of the Goldsmith Race. — 
Poetical Birthplace. — Goblin House. — Scenes of Boyhood. 
— Lissoy. — Picture of a Country Parson. — Goldsmith's 
Schoolmistress. — Byrne, the Village Schoolmaster. — Gold- 
smith's Hornpipe and Epigram. — Uncle Contarine. — School 
Studies and School Sports. — Mistakes of a Night . . 9 

CHAPTER 11. 

Improvident Marriages in the Goldsmith Family. — Goldsmith at 
the University. — Situation of a Sizer. — Tyranny of Wilder, 
the Tutor. — Pecuniary Straits. — Street-ballads. — College 
Riot. — Gallows Walsh. — College Prize. -^ A Dance inter- 
rupted 19 

CHAPTER III. 

Goldsmith rejected by the Bishop. — Second Sally to see the 
World. — Takes Passage for America. — Ship sails w^ithout 
him. — Return on Fiddle-back. — A Hospitable Friend. — 
The Counsellor 30 

CHAPTER IV, 

Sallies forth as a Law Student. — Stumbles at the Outset. — 
Cousin Jane and the Valentine. — A Family Oracle. — Sallies 
forth as a Student of Medicine. — Hocus-pocus of a Boarding- 
house. — Transformations of a Leg of Mutton. —The Mock 
Ghost. — Sketches of Scotland. — Trials of Toadyism. — A 
Poet's Purse for a Continental Tour 36 

CHAPTER V. 

The Agreeable Fellow-passengers. — Risks from Friends picked 
up by the Wayside. — Sketches of Hull and the Dutch. — 
Shifts while a Poor Student at Leyden. — The Tulip-specu- 
lation. — The Provident Flute. — Sojourn at Paris. — Sketch 
of Voltaire. — Travelling Shifts of a Philosophic Vagabond . 45 

CHAPTER VL 

Landing in England. — Shifts of a Man without Money. — The 
Pestle and Mortar. — Theatricals in a Barn. — Launch upon 

3 



/ 



4 CONTENTS OF LIFE OF GOLBSMFTH. 



PAGE 



London. — A City Night-scene. — Struggles with Penury. — 
Miseries of a Tutor. — A Doctor in the Suburb. — Poor 
Practice and Second-hand Finery. — A Tragedy in Embryo. 

— Project of the Written Mountains . . . . .54 

CHAPTER VII. 

Life of a Pedagogue. — Kindness to Schoolboys. — Pertness in 
Return. — Expensive Charities. — The Griffiths and the 
Monthly Bevieio. — Toils of a Literary Hack. — Rupture 
with the Griffiths 59 

CHAPTER VIIL 

Newbery, of Picture-book Memory. — How to keep up Appear- 
ances. — Miseries of Authorship. — A Poor Relation. — 
Letter to Hodson 63 

CHAPTER IX. 

Hackney Authorship. — Thoughts of Literary Suicide. — Return 
to Peckham. — Oriental Projects. — Literary Enterprise to 
raise Eunds. — Letter to Edward Wells ; to Robert Bryan- 
ton. — Death of Uncle Contarine. — Letter to Cousin Jane . 68 

CHAPTER X. 

Oriental Appointment ; and Disappointment. — Examination at 
the College of Surgeons. — How to procure a Suit of Clothes. 

— Fresh Disappointment. — A Tale of Distress. — The Suit 
of Clothes in Pawn. — Punishment for doing an Act of 
Charity. — Gayeties of Green- Arbor Court. — Letter to his 
Brother. — Life of Voltaire. — Scroggins, an Attempt at 
Mock-heroic Poetry 75 

CHAPTER XL 

Publication of The Inquiry. — Attacked by Griffiths' Beview. — 
Kenrick, the Literary Ishmaelite. — Periodical Literature. — 
Goldsmith's Essays. — Garrick as a Manager. — Smollett and 
his Schemes. — Change of Lodgings. — The Robin Hood Club 87 

CHAPTER XII. 

New Lodgings. — Visits of Ceremony, — Hangers-on. — Pilking- 
ton and the White Mouse. — Introduction to Dr. Johnson. 

— Davies and his Bookshop. — Pretty Mrs. Davies. — Foote 

and his Projects. — Criticism of the Cudgel .... 93 

CHAPTER XIII. 

Oriental Projects. — Literary Jobs. — The Cherokee Chiefs. — 
Merry Islington and the White Conduit House. — Letters 



CONTENTS OF LIFE OF GOLDSMITH. 



on the History of England. — James Boswell. — Dinner of 
Davies. — Anecdotes of Johnson and Goldsmitli ... 98 

CHAPTER XIV. 

Hogartli a Visitor at Islington ; his Character. — Street Studies. 

— Sympathies between Authors and Painters. — Sir Joshua 
Reynolds ; his Character ; his Dinners. — The Literary Club ; 
its Members. — Johnson's Revels with Lanky and Beau. — 
Goldsmith at the Club 105 

CHAPTER XV. 

Johnson a Monitor to Goldsmith ; finds hira in Distress with his 
Landlady ; relieved by the Vicar of Wakefield. — The Ora- 
torio. — Poem of The Traveller'. — The Poet and his Dog. — 
Success of the Poem. — Astonishment at the Club. — Ob- 
servations on the Poem 113 

CHAPTER XVI. 

New Lodgings. — Johnson's Compliment. — A Titled Patron. — 
The Poet at Northumberland House. — His Independence of 
the Great. — The Countess of Northumberland. — Edioin 
and Angelina. — Gosfield and Lord Clare. — Publication of 
Essays. — Evils of a Rising Reputation. — Hangers-on. — 
Job-writing. — Goody Two-Shoes. — A Medical Campaign. 

— Mrs. Sidebotham 118 

• CHAPTER XVn. 

Publication of the Vicar of Wakefield; Opinions concerning it: 
of Dr. Johnson ; of JRogers the Poet ; of Goethe ; its Merits ; 
Exquisite Extract. — Attack by Kenrick. — Reply, — Book- 
building. — Project of a Comedy 125 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

Social Position of Goldsmith ; his Colloquial Contests with John- 
son. — Anecdotes and Illustrations 132 

CHAPTER XIX. 

Social Resorts. — The Shilling Whist-club. — A Practical Joke. 

— The Wednesday Club. —The Tun of Man. — The Pig- 
butcher. — Tom King. — Hugh Kelly. — Glover and his 
Characteristics 137 

CHAPTER XX. 

The Great Cham of Literature and the King. — Scene at Sir 
Joshua Reynolds's. — Goldsmith accused of Jealousy. — 
Negotiations with Garrick. — The Author and the Actor ; 
their Correspondence ........ 141 



CONTENTS OF LIFE OF GOLDSMFTH. 



CHAPTER XXI. 



PAGE 



More Hack-authorship. — Tom Davies and the Roman History. 

— Canonbury Castle. — Political Authorship, — Pecuniary 
Temptation. — Death of Newbery the Elder . . . 146 

CHAPTER XXII. 

Theatrical Manoeuvring. — The Comedy of False Delicacy. — 
First Performance of The Good-natured Man — Conduct 
of Johnson. — Conduct of the Author. — Intermeddling of 
the Press 149 

CHAPTER XXIII. 

Burning the Candle at Both Ends. — Eine Apartments. — Eine 
Eurniture. — Eine Clothes. — Eine Acquaintances. — Shoe- 
maker's Holiday and Jolly-Pigeon Associates. — Peter Bar- 
low, Glover, and the Hampstead Hoax. — Poor Eriends 
among Great Acquaintances 154 

CHAPTER XXIV. 

Reduced again to Book-building. — Rural Retreat at Shoe- 
maker's Paradise. — Death of Henry Goldsmith ; Tributes 
to his Memory in the Deserted Village 158 

CHAPTER XXV. 

Dinner at Bickerstaff's. — Hiffernan and his Impecuniosity. — 
Kenrick's Epigram. — Johnson's Consolation. — Goldsmith's 
Toilet. — The Bloom-colored Coat. — New Acquaintances ; 
the Hornecks. — A Touch of Poetry aixl Passion. — The 
Jessamy Bride . 161 

CHAPTER XXVI. 

Goldsmith in the Temple. — Judge Day and Grattan. — Labor 
and Dissipation. — Publication of the Roman History. — 
Opinions of it. — History of Animated Nature. — Temp'e 
Rookery. — Anecdotes of a Spider 167 

CHAPTER XXVII. 

Honors at the Royal Academy. — Letter to his Brother Maurice. 

— Eamily Fortunes. — Jane Contarine and the Miniature. — 
Portraits and Engravings. — School Associations. — Johnson 

and Goldsmith in Westminster Abbey 174 

CHAPTER XXVIIL 

Publication of the Deserted Village; Notices and Illustrations 

of it 178 



CONTENTS OF LIFE OF GOLDSMITH. 



CHAPTER XXIX. 



PAGE 



The Poet among the Ladies ; Description of his Person and Man- 
ners. — Expedition to Paris witli tlie Horneck Family. — ■ 
The Traveller of Twenty and the Traveller of Forty. — 
Hickey, the Special Attorney. — An Unlucky Exploit . . 184 

CHAPTER XXX. 

Death of Goldsmith's Mother. — Biography of Parnell. — Agree- 
ment with Davies for the History of Borne. — Life of Boling- 
broke. — The Haunch of Veniso7i 192 

CHAPTER XXXI. 

Dinner at the Royal Academy. — The Rowley Controversy. — ■ 
Horace Walpole's Conduct to Chatterton. — Johnson at Red- 
cliffe Church. — Goldsmith's History of England. — Davies's 
Criticism. — Letter to Bennet Langton 196 

CHAPTER XXXII. 

Marriage of Little Comedy. — Goldsmith at Barton. — Practical 
Jokes at the Expense of his Toilet. — Amusements at Barton. 

— Aquatic Misadventure 200 

CHAPTER XXXIII. 

Dinner at General Oglethorpe's. — Anecdotes of the General. — 

Dispute about Duelling. — Ghost Stories .... 203 

CHAPTER XXXIV. 

Mr. Joseph Cradock. — An Author's Confidings. — An Amanu- 
ensis. — Life at Edge ware. — Goldsmith Conjuring. — George 
Colman. — The Fantoccini 207 

""^ CHAPTER XXXV. 

Broken Health. — Dissipation and Debts. — The Irish Widow. 

— Practical Jokes. — Scrub. — A Misquoted Pun. — Mala- 
grida. — Goldsmith proved to be a Fool. — Distressed Ballad- 
singers. — The Poet at Ranelagh 215 

CHAPTER XXXVL 

Invitation to Christmas. — The Spring-velvet Coat. — The Hay- 
making Wig. — The Mischances of Loo. — The Fair Culprit. 

— A Dance with the Jessamy Bride 223 

CHAPTER XXXVII. 

Theatrical Delays. — Negotiations with Colman. — Letter to Gar- 
rick. — Croaking of the Manager. — Naming of the Play. — 



8 CONTENTS OF LIFE OF GOLDSMITH. 



PAGE 



She Stoops to Conquer. — Foote's Primitive Puppet-show, 
Piety on Fattens. — First Performance of the Comedy. — 
Agitation of the Author. — Success. — Colman squibbed out 
of Town 227 

CHAPTER XXXVIII. 
A Newspaper Attack. — The Evans Affray. — Johnson's Comment 236 

CHAPTER XXXIX. 

/ Boswell in Holy-week.l — Dinner at Oglethorpe's. — Dinner at 
/. PaoU's. — The Policy of Truth. — Goldsmith affects Inde- 
pendence of Royalty. — Paoli's Compliment. — Johnson's 
Eulogium on the Fiddle. — Question about Suicide. — Bos- 
well's Subserviency 240 

CHAPTER XL. 

Changes in the Literary Club. — Johnson's Objection to Garrick. 

— Election of Boswell 248 

CHAPTER XLL 

Dinner at Dilly's. — Conversations on Natural History. — Inter- 
meddling of Boswell. — Dispute about Toleration. — John- 
son's Rebuff to Goldsmith ; his Apology. — Man-worship. — 
Doctors Major and Minor. — A Farewell Visit . . . 251 

CHAPTER XLIL 

Project of a Dictionary of Arts and Sciences. — Disappointment. 

— Negligent Authorship. — Application for a Pension. — 
Beattie's Essay on Truth. — Public Adulation. — A High- 
minded Rebuke 256 

CHAPTER XLIII. 

Toil without Hope. — The Poet in the Green-room ; in the Flower- 
garden ; at Vauxhall ; Dissipation without Gayety. — Crad- 
ock in Town ; Friendly Sympathy ; a Parting Scene ; an 
Invitation to Pleasure . 260 

CHAPTER XLIV. 

A Return to Drudgery ; Forced Gayety ; Retreat to the Country ; 
the Poem of Betaliation. — Portrait of Garrick ; of Gold- 
smith ; of Reynolds. — Illness of the Poet ; his Death ; Grief 
of his Friends. — A Last Word respecting the Jessamy Bride 265 

CHAPTER XLV. 

The Funeral. — The Monument. — The Epitaph. — Concluding 

Reflections 273 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 



-OOjOjCK)- 



CHAPTER I. 

There are few writers for whom the reader feels such personal 
kindness as for Oliver Goldsmith, for few have so eminently pos- 
sessed the magic gift of identifying themselves with their writings. 
We read liis character in every page, and grow into familiar in- 
timacy with him as we read. The artless benevolence that beams 
throughout his works ; the whimsical, yet amiable views of human 
life and human nature ; the unforced humor, blending so happily 
with good feeling and good sense, and singularly dashed at times 
with a pleasing melancholy ; even the very nature of his mellow, 
and flowing, and softly-tinted style, — all seem to bespeak his 
moral as well as his intellectual qualities, and make us love the 
man at the same time that we admire the author. While the 
productions of writers of loftier pretension and more sounding 
names are suftered to moulder on our shelves, those of Goldsmith 
are cherished and laid in our bosoms. We do not quote them 
with ostentation, but they mingle with our minds, sweeten our 
tempers, and harmonize our thoughts ; they put us in good-humor 
with ourselves and with the world, and in so doing they make us 
happier and better men. 

An acquaintance with the private biography of Goldsmith lets 
us into the secret of his gifted pages. We there discover them to 
be little more than transcripts of his own heart and picturings of 
his fortunes. There he shows himself the same kind, artless, good- 
humored, excursive, sensible, whimsical, intelligent being that he 
appears in his writings. Scarcely an adventure or character is 
given in his works that may not be traced to his o^v^n parti-colored 

9 



10 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

story. Many of his most ludicrous scenes and ridiculous incidents 
have been drawn from his own blunders and mischances, and he 
seems really to have been buffeted into almost every maxim 
imparted by him for the instruction of his reader. 

Oliver Goldsmith was born on the 10th of November, 1728, at 
the hamlet of Pallas, or Pallasmore, county of Longford, in Ireland. 
He sprang from a respectable, but by no means a thrifty stock. 
Some families seem to inherit kindliness and incompetency, and 
to hand down virtue and poverty from generation to generation. 
Such was the case with the Goldsmiths. " They were always," 
according to their own accounts, "a strange family; they rarely 
acted like other people ; their hearts were in the right place, but 
their heads seemed to be doing anything but what they ought." 
" They were remarkable," says another statement, " for their worth, 
but of no cleverness in the ways of the world." Oliver Goldsmith 
will be found faithfully to inherit the virtues and weaknesses of 
his race. 

His father, the Rev. Charles Goldsmith, with hereditary im- 
providence, married when very young and very poor, and starved 
along for several years on a small country curacy and the assist- 
ance of his wife's friends. His whole income, eked out by the 
produce of some fields which he farmed, and of some occasional 
duties performed for his wife's uncle, the rector of an adjoining 
parish, did not exceed forty pounds. 

" And passing rich with forty pounds a year." 

He inhabited an old, half rustic mansion, that stood on a rising 
ground in a rough, lonely part of the country, overlooking a low 
tract occasionally flooded by the river Inny. In this house Gold- 
smith was born, and it was a birthplace worthy of a poet ; for, by 
all accounts, it was haunted ground. A tradition handed down 
among the neighboring peasantry states that, in after-years, the 
house, remaining for some time untenanted, went to decay, the 
roof fell in, and it became so lonely and forlorn as to be a resort 
for the " good people " or fairies, who in Ireland are supposed to 



HIS FATHEB. 11 

delight in old, crazy, deserted mansions for their midnight revels. 
All attempts to repair it were in vain ; the fairies battled stoutly 
to maintain possession. A huge misshapen hobgoblin used to 
bestride the house every evening with an immense pair of jack- 
boots, which, in his efforts at hard riding, he would thrust through 
the roof, kicking to pieces all the work of the preceding day. 
The house was therefore left to its fate, and went to ruin. 

Such is the popular tradition about Goldsmith's birthplace. 
About two years after his birth a change came over the circum- 
stances of his father. By the death of his wife's uncle he suc- 
ceeded to the rectory of Kilkenny West ; and, abandoning the old 
goblin mansion, he removed to Lissoy, in the county of Westmeath, 
where he occupied a farm of seventy acres, situated on the skirts 
of that pretty little village. 

This was the scene of Goldsmith's boyhood, the little world 
whence he drew many of those pictures, rural and domestic, whim- 
sical and touching, which abound throughout his works, and which 
appeal so eloquently both to the fancy and the heart. Lissoy is 
confidently cited as the original of his "Auburn" in the Deserted 
Village; his father's establishment, a mixture of farm and parson- 
age, furnished hints, it is said, for the rural economy of the " Vicar 
of Wakefield " ; and his father himself, with his learned simplicity, 
his guileless wisdom, his amiable piety, and utter ignorance of the 
world, has been exquisitely portrayed in the worthy Dr. Primrose. 
Let us pause for a moment, and draw from Goldsmith's writings 
one or two of those pictures which, under feigned names, represent 
his father and his family, and the happy fireside of his childish 
days. 

"My father," says the "Man in Black," who, in some respects, is 
a counterpart of Goldsmith himself, — "my father, the younger son 
of a good family, was possessed of a small living in the church. His 
education was above his fortune, and his generosity greater than his 
education. Poor as he was, he had his flatterers poorer than himself : 
for every dinner he gave them, they returned him an equivalent in 
praise ; and this was all he wanted. The same ambition that actuates 
a monarch at the head of his army, influenced my father at the head 



12 OLIVER GOLDSMITH, 

of his table ; he told the story of the ivy-tree, and that was laughed 
at ; he repeated the jest of the two scholars and one pair of breeches, 
and the company laughed at that ; but the story of Taffy in the sedan- 
chair was sure to set the table in a roar. Thus his pleasure increased 
in proportion to the pleasure he gave ; he loved all the world, and he 
fancied all the world loved him. 

" As his fortune was but small, he lived up to the very extent of 
it : he had no intention of leaving his children money, for that was 
dross ; he resolved they should have learning, for learning, he used to 
observe, was better than silver or gold. For this purpose he under- 
took to instruct us himself, and took as much care to form our morals 
as to improve our understanding. We were told that universal be- 
nevolence was what first cemented society : we were taught to con- 
sider all the wants of mankind as our own ; to regard the human 
face divine with affection and esteem ; he wound us up to be mere 
machines of pity, and rendered us incapable of withstanding the 
slightest impulse made either by real or fictitious distress. In a 
word, we were perfectly instructed in the art of giving away thou- 
sands before we were taught the necessary qualifications of getting a 
farthing." 

In the Deserted Village we have another picture of his father 
and his father's fireside : — 

" His house was known to all the vagrant train, 
He chid their wanderings, but relieved their pain ; 
The long-remembered beggar was his guest, 
Whose beard, descending, swept his aged breast ; 
The ruin'd spendthrift, now no longer proud, 
Claim'd kindred there, and had his claims allow'd ; 
The broken soldier, kindly bade to stay. 
Sat by his fire, and talked the night away ; 
Wept o'er his wounds, or tales of sorrow done, 
Shoulder'd his crutch, and show'd how fields were won. 
Pleased with his guests, the good man learned to glow. 
And quite forgot their vices in their woe ; 
Careless their merits or their faults to scan. 
His pity gave ere charity began." 

The family of the worthy pastor consisted of five sons and three 
daughters. Henry, the eldest, was the good man's pride and hope, 
and he tasked his slender means to the utmost in educating him 



HIS EAELY EDUCATION. 13 

for a learned and distinguished career. Oliver was the second' 
son, and seven years younger than Henry, who was the guide and 
protector of his childhood, and to whom he was most tenderly 
attached throughout life. 

Oliver's education began when he was about three years old ; 
that is to say, he was gathered under the wings of one of those 
good old motherly dames, found in every village, who cluck together 
the whole callow brood of the neighborhood, to teach them their 
letters and keep them out of harm's way. Mistress Elizabeth 
Delap, for that was her name, flourished in this capacity for up- 
ward of fifty years, and it was the pride and boast of her declining 
days, when nearly ninety years of age, that she was the first that 
had put a book (doubtless a hornbook) into Goldsmith's hands. 
Apparently he did not much profit by it, for she confessed he was 
one of the dullest boys she had ever dealt with, insomuch that she 
had sometimes doubted whether it was possible to make anything 
of him : a common case with imaginative children, who are apt to 
be beguiled from the dry abstractions of elementary study by the 
picturings of the fancy. 

At six years of age he passed into the hands of the village 
schoolmaster, one Thomas (or, as he was commonly and irrev- 
erently named, Paddy) Byrne, a capital tutor for a poet. He 
had been educated for a pedagogue, but had enlisted in the army, 
served abroad during the wars of Queen Anne's time, and risen 
to the rank of quartermaster of a regiment in Spain. At the re- 
turn of peace, having no longer exercise for the sword, he resumed 
the ferule, and drilled the urchin populace of Lissoy. Goldsmith 
is supposed to have had him and his school in view in the follow- 
ing sketch in his Deserted Village : — 

"Beside yon straggling fence that skirts the way, 
With blossom' d furze unprofitably gay, 
There, in his noisy mansion, skill' d to rule, 
The village master taught his little school ; 
A man severe he was, and stern to view, 
I knew him well, and every truant knew,: 



14 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

Well had the boding tremblers learn' d to trace 
The day's disasters in his morning face ; 
Full well they laugh'd with counterfeited glee 
At all his jokes, for many a joke had he ; 
Full well the busy whisper circling round, 
Convey'd the dismal tidings when he frown'd : 
Yet he was kind, or, if severe in aught, 
The love he bore to learning was in fault ; 
The village all declared how much he knew, 
'T was certain he could write, and cipher too ; 
Lands he could measure, terms and tides presage, 
And e'en the story ran that he could gauge • 
In arguing, too, the parson own'd his skill. 
For, e'en though vanquished, he could argue still ; 
While words of learned length and thund'ring sound 
Amazed the gazing rustics, ranged around, — 
And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew, 
That one small head could carry all he knew." 

There are certain whimsical traits in the character of Byrne, 
not given in the foregoing sketch. He was fond of talking of his 
vagabond wanderings in foreign lands, and had brought with him 
from the wars a world of campaigning stories, of which he was 
generally the hero, and which he would deal forth to his wonder- 
ing scholars when he ought to have been teaching them their 
lessons. These travellers' tales had a powerful effect upon the 
vivid imagination of Goldsmith, and awakened an unconquerable 
passion for w^andering and seeking adventure. 

Byrne was, moreover, of a romantic vein, and exceedingly su- 
perstitious. He was deeply versed in the fairy superstitions 
which abound in Ireland, all which he professed implicitly to be- 
lieve. Under his tuition Goldsmith soon became almost as great 
a proficient in fairy lore. From this branch of good-for-nothing 
knowledge his studies, by an easy transition, extended to the 
histories of robbers, pirates, smugglers, and the whole race of 
Irish rogues and rapparees. Everything, in short, that savored 
of romance, fable, and adventure, was congenial to his poetic 
mind, and took instant root there ; but the slow plants of useful 



BYRNE, THE VILLAGE SCH00L3IASTER. 15 

knowle(Jge were apt to be overrun, if not choked, by the weeds of 
his quick imagination. 

Another trait of his motley preceptor, Byrne, was a disposition 
to dabble in poetry, and this likewise was caught by his pupil. 
Before he was eight years old. Goldsmith had contracted a habit 
of scribbling verses on small scraps of paper, which, in a little 
while, he would throw into the fire. A few of these sibylline 
leaves, however, were rescued from the flames and conveyed to his 
mother. The good woman read them with a mother's delight, 
and saw at once that her son was a genius and a poet. From 
that time she beset her husband with solicitations to give the boy 
an education suitable to his talents. The worthy man was 
already straitened by the costs of instruction of his eldest son 
Henry, and had intended to bring his second son up to a 
trade ; but the mother would listen to no such thing ; as usual, 
her influence prevailed, and Oliver, instead of being instructed in 
some humble, but cheerful and gainful handicraft, was devoted to 
poverty and the Muse. 

A severe attack of the small-pox caused him to be taken from 
under the care of his story-telling preceptor, Byrne. His malady 
had nearly proved fatal, and his face remained pitted through life. 
On his recovery he was placed under the charge of the Rev. Mr. 
Griffin, schoolmaster of Elphin, in Roscommon, and became an 
inmate in the house of his uncle, John Goldsmith, Esq., of Bally- 
oughter, in that vicinity. He now entered upon studies of a 
higher order, but without making any uncommon progress. Still 
a careless, easy facility of disposition, an amusing eccentricity 
of manners, and a vein of quiet and peculiar humor, rendered 
him a general favorite, and a trifling incident soon induced his 
uncle's family to concur in his mother's opinion of his genius. 

A number of young folks had assembled at his uncle's to dance. 
One of the company, named Cummings, played on the violin. In 
the course of the evening Oliver undertook a hornpipe. His short 
and clumsy figure, and his face pitted and discolored with the 
small-pox, rendered him a ludicrous figure in the eyes of the 



16 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

musician, who made merry at his expense, clubbing him his little 
-^sop. Goldsmith was nettled by the jest, and, stopping short in 
the hornpipe, exclaimed, — 

" Our herald hath proclaimed this saying, 
See ^sop dancing, and his monkey playing." 

The repartee was thought wonderful for a boy of nine years old, 
and Oliver became forthwith the wit and the bright genius of the 
family. It was thought a pity he should not receive the same 
advantages with his elder brother Henry, who had been sent to 
the University ; and, as his father's circumstances would not af- 
ford it, several of his relatives, spurred on by the representations 
of his mother, agreed to contribute towards the expense. The 
greater part, however, was borne by his uncle, the Rev. Thomas 
Contarine. This worthy man had been the college companion of 
Bishop Berkeley, and was possessed of moderate means, holding 
the living of Carrick-on-Shannon. He had married the sister of 
Goldsmith's father, but was now a widower, with an only child, a 
daughter, named Jane. Contarine was a kind-hearted man, with 
a generosity beyond his means. He took Goldsmith into favor 
from his infancy ; his house was open to him during the holidays ; 
his daughter Jane, two years older than the poet, was his early 
playmate ; and uncle Contarine continued to the last one of his 
most active, unwavering, and generous friends. 

Fitted out in a great measure by this considerate relative, 
Oliver was now transferred to schools of a higher order, to pre- 
pare him for the University ; first to one at Athlone, kept by the 
Rev. Mr. Campbell, and, at the end of two years, to one at 
Edgeworthstown, under the superintendence of the Rev. Patrick 
Hughes. 

Even at these schools his proficiency does not appear to have 
been brilliant. He was indolent and careless, however, rather 
than dull, and, on the whole, appears to have been well thought 
of by his teachers. In his studies he inclined towards the Latin 
poets and historians ; relished Ovid and Horace, and delighted in 



SCHOOL STUDIES AND SPORTS. 17 

Livy. He exercised himself with pleasure in reading and trans- 
lating Tacitus, and was brought to pay attention to style in his 
compositions by a reproof from his brother Henry, to whom he 
had written brief and confused letters, and who told him in reply, 
that, if he had but little to say, to endeavor to say that little 
well. 

The career of his brother Henry at the University was enough 
to stimulate him to exertion. He seemed to be realizing all his 
father's hopes, and was winning collegiate honors that the good 
man considered indicative of his future success in life. 

In the meanwhile, Oliver, if not distinguished among his 
teachers, was popular among his schoolmates. He had a thought- 
less generosity extremely captivating to young hearts : his temper 
was quick and sensitive, and easily offended ; but his anger was 
momentary, and it was impossible for him to harbor resentment. 
He was the leader of all boyish sports, and athletic amusements, 
especially ball-playing, and he was foremost in all mischievous 
pranks. Many years afterward, an old man. Jack Fitzsimmons, 
one of the directors of the sports, and keeper of the ball-court at 
Ballymahon, used to boast of having been schoolmate of " Noll 
Goldsmith," as he called him, and would dwell with vainglory on 
one of their exploits, in robbing the orchard of Tirlicken, an old 
family residence of Lord Annaly. The exploit, however, had 
nearly involved disastrous consequences ; for the crew of juvenile 
depredators w^ere captured, like Shakspeare and his deer-stealing col- 
leagues ; and nothing but the respectability of Goldsmith's connec- 
tions saved him from the punishment that would have awaited 
more plebeian delinquents. 

An amusing incident is related as occurring in Goldsmith's last 
journey homeward from Edgeworthstown. His father's house 
was about twenty miles distant; the road lay through a rough 
country, impassable for carriages. Goldsmith procured a horse 
for the journey, and a friend furnished him with a guinea for 
travelling expenses. He was but a stripling of sixteen, and being 
thus suddenly mounted on horseback, with money in his pocket, 



18 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

it is no wonder that his head was turned. He determined to play 
the man, and to spend his money in independent traveller's style. 
Accordingly, instead of ^^ushing directly for home, he halted for 
the night at the little town of Ardagli, and, accosting the first 
person he met, inquired, with somewhat of a consequential air, for 
the best house in the place. Unluckily, the person he had ac- 
costed was one Kelly, a notorious wag, who was quartered in the 
family of one Mr. Featherstone, a gentleman of fortune. Amused 
with the self-consequence of the stripling, and willing to play off a 
practical joke at his expense, he directed him to what was liter- 
ally " the best house in the place," namely, the family mansion of 
Mr. Featherstone. Goldsmith accordingly rode up to what he 
supposed to be an inn, ordered his horse to be taken to the stable, 
walked into the parlor, seated himself by the fire, and demanded 
what he could have for supper. On ordinary occasions he was 
diffident and even awkward in his manners, but here he was "at 
ease in his inn," and felt called upon to show his manhood and 
enact the experienced traveller. His person was by no means cal- 
culated to play ofi" his pretensions, for he was short and thick, 
with a pock-marked face, and an air and carriage by no means of 
a distinguished cast. The owner of the house, however, soon dis- 
covered his whimsical mistake, and, being a man of humor, deter- 
mined to indulge it, especially as he accidentally learned that this 
intruding guest was the son of an old acquaintance. 

Accordingly, Goldsmith was "fooled to the top of his bent," and 
permitted to have full sway throughout the evening. Never was 
schoolboy more elated. When supper was served, he most con- 
descendingly insisted that the landlord, his wife and daughter 
should partake, and ordered a bottle of wine to crown the repast 
and benefit the house. His last flourish was on going to bed, 
when he gave especial orders to have a hot cake at breakfast. 
His confusion and dismay, on discovering the next morning that 
he had been swaggering in this free and easy way in the house of 
a private gentleman, may be readily conceived. True to his habit 
of turning the events of his life to literary account, we find this 



IMPROVIDENT MARRIAGES. 19 

chapter of ludicrous blunders and cross-purposes dramatized many 
years afterward in his admirable comedy of She Stoops to Conquer, 
or the Mistakes of a Night. 



CHAPTER II. 

While Oliver was making his way somewhat negligently through 
the schools, his elder brother Henry was rejoicing his father's 
heart by his career at the University. He soon distinguished 
himself at the examinations, and obtained a scholarship in 1743. 
This is a collegiate distinction which serves as a stepping-stone in 
any of the learned professions, and which leads to advancement in 
the University should the individual choose to remain there. His 
father now trusted that he would push forward for that comfort- 
able provision, a fellowship, and thence to higher dignities and 
emoluments. Henry, however, had the improvidence, or the " un- 
worldliness " of his race : returning to the country during the suc- 
ceeding vacation, he married for love, relinquished, of course, all 
his collegiate prospects and advantages, set up a school in his 
father's neighborhood, and buried his talents and acquirements for 
the remainder of his life in a curacy of forty pounds a year. 

Another matrimonial event occurred not long afterward in the 
Goldsmith family, to disturb the equanimity of its worthy head. 
This was the clandestine marriage of his daughter Catherine with 
a young gentleman of the name of Hodson, who had been confided 
to the care of her brother Henry to complete his studies. As the 
youth was of wealthy parentage, it was thought a lucky match 
for the Goldsmith family ; but the tidings of the event stung the 
bride's father to the soul. Proud of his integrity, and jealous of 
that good name which was his chief possession, he saw himself 
and his family subjected to the degrading suspicion of having 
abused a trust reposed in them to promote a mercenary match. 
In the first transports of his feelings, he is said to have uttered a 
wish that his daughter might never have a child to bring like 



20 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

shame and sorrow on her head. The hasty wish, so contrary to 
the usual benignity of the man, was recalled and repented of al- 
most as soon as uttered ; but it was considered baleful in its eftects 
by the superstitious neighborhood ; for, though his daughter bore 
three children, they all died before her. 

A more effectual measure was taken by Mr. Goldsmith to ward 
off the apprehended imputation, but one which imposed a heavy 
burden on his family. This was to furnish a marriage portion of 
four hundred pounds, that his daughter might not be said to have 
entered her husband's family empty-handed. To raise the sum in 
cash was impossible ; but he assigned to Mr. Hodson his little 
farm and the income of his tithes until the marriage portion should 
be paid. In the meantime, as his living did not amount to <£200 
per annum, he had to practise the strictest economy to pay off 
gradually this heavy tax incurred by his nice sense of honor. 

The first of his family to feel the effects of this economy was 
Oliver. The time had now arrived for him to be sent to the Uni- 
versity; and, accordingly, on the 11th June, 1745, when seven- 
teen years of age, he entered Trinity College, Dublin ; but his 
father was no longer able to place him there as a pensioner, as he 
had done his eldest son Henry ; he was obliged, therefore, to enter 
him as a sizer, or " poor scholar." He was lodged in one of the 
top rooms adjoining the library of the building, numbered 35, 
where it is said his name may still be seen, scratched by himself 
upon a window-frame. 

A student of this class is taught and boarded gratuitously, and 
has to pay but a small sum for his room. It is expected, in return 
for these advantages, that he will be a diligent student, and render 
himself useful in a variety of ways. In Trinity College, at the 
time of Goldsmith's admission, several derogatory, and, indeed, 
menial offices were exacted from the sizer, as if the college sought 
to indemnify itself for conferring benefits by inflicting indignities. 
He was obliged to sweep part of the courts in the morning ; to 
carry up the dishes from the kitchen to the fellows' table, and to 
wait in the hall until that body had dined. His very dress 



SITUATION OF A SIZEB. 21 

marked the inferiority of the " poor student " to his happier class- 
mates. It was a black gown of coarse stuff without sleeves, and 
a plain black cloth cap without a tassel. We can conceive nothing 
more odious and ill-judged than these distinctions, which attached 
the idea of degradation to poverty, and placed the indigent youth 
of merit below the worthless minion of fortune. They were calcu- 
lated to wound and irritate the noble mind, and to render the base 
mind baser. 

Indeed, the galling effect of these servile tasks upon youths of 
proud spirits and quick sensibilities became at length too notorious 
to be disregarded. About fifty years since, on a Trinity Sunday, a 
number of persons were assembled to witness the college ceremo- 
nies ; and as a sizer was carrying up a dish of meat to the fellows' 
table, a burly citizen in the crowd made some sneering observation 
on the servility of his oflSce. Stung to the quick, the high-spirited 
youth instantly flung the dish and its contents at the head of the 
sneerer. The sizer was sharply reprimanded for this outbreak of 
wounded pride, but the degrading task was from that day forw^ard 
very properly consigned to menial hands. 

It was with the utmost repugnance that Goldsmith entered col- 
lege in this capacity. His shy and sensitive nature was affected by 
the inferior station he was doomed to hold among his gay and 
opulent fellow-students, and he became, at times, moody and de- 
spondent. A recollection of these early mortifications induced him, 
in after-years, most strongly to dissuade his brother Henry, the 
clergyman, from sending a son to college on a like footing. " If 
he has ambition, strong passions, and an exquisite sensibility of 
contempt, do not send him there, unless you have no other trade 
for him except your own." 

To add to his annoyances, the fellow of the college who had the 
peculiar control of his studies, the Eev. Theaker Wilder, was a man 
of violent and capricious temper, and of diametrically opposite 
tastes. The tutor was devoted to the exact sciences ; Goldsmith 
was for the classics. Wilder endeavored to force his faivorite 
studies upon the student by harsh means, suggested by his own 



22 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

coarse and savage nature. He abused him in presence of the class 
as ignorant and stupid ; ridiculed him as awkward and ugly, and 
at times in the transports of his temper indulged in personal vio- 
lence. The effect was to aggravate a passive distaste into a posi- 
tive aversion. Goldsmith was loud in expressing his contempt 
for mathematics and his dislike of ethics and logic ; and the 
prejudices thus imbibed continued through life. Mathematics -he 
always pronounced a science to which the meanest intellects were 
competent. 

A truer cause of this distaste for the severer studies may prob- 
ably be found in his natural indolence and his love of convivial 
pleasures. " I was a lover of mirth, good -humor, and even some- 
times of fun," said he, "from my childhood." He sang a good 
song, was a boon companion, and could not resist any temptation 
to social enjoyment. He endeavored to persuade himself that 
learning and dulness went hand in hand, and that genius was not 
to be put in harness. Even in riper years, when the consciousness 
of his own deficiencies ought to have convinced him of the impor- 
tance of early study, he speaks slightingly of college honors. 

"A lad," says he, "whose passions are not strong enough in 
youth to mislead him from that path of science which his tutors, 
and not his inclination, have chalked out, by four or five years' 
perseverance will probably obtain every advantage and honor his 
college can bestow. I would compare the man whose youth has 
been thus passed in the tranquillity of dispassionate prudence, to 
liquors that never ferment, and, consequently, continue always 
muddy." 

The death of his worthy father, which took place early in 1747, 
rendered Goldsmith's situation at college extremely irksome. His 
mother was left with little more than the means of providing for 
the wants of her household, and was unable to furnish him any 
remittances. He would have been compelled, therefore, to leave 
college, had it not been for the occasional contributions of friends, 
the foremost among whom was his generous and warm-hearted 
uncle Contarine. Still these supplies were so scanty and precari- 



COLLEGE RIOT. 23 

ous, that in the intervals between them he was put to great 
straits. He had two college associates from whom he would occa- 
sionally borrow small sums ; one was an early schoolmate, by the 
name of Beatty ; the other a cousin, and the chosen companion of 
his frolics, Robert (or rather Bob) Bryanton, of Ballymulvey 
House, near Ballymahon. When these casual supplies failed him, 
he was more than once obliged to raise funds for his immediate 
wants by pawning his books. At times he sank into despondency, 
but he had what he termed " a knack at hoping," which soon 
buoyed him up again. He began now to resort to his poetical vein 
as a source of profit, scribbling street-ballads, which he privately 
sold for five shillings each at a shop which dealt in such small 
wares of literature. He felt an author's affection for these un- 
owned bantlings, and we are told would stroll privately through 
the streets at night to hear them sung, listening to the comments 
and criticisms of by-standers, and observing the degree of applause 
which each received. 

Edmund Burke was a fellow-student with Goldsmith at the col- 
lege. Neither the statesman nor the poet gave promise of their 
future celebrity, though Burke certainly surpassed his contempo- 
rary in industry and application, and evinced more disposition for 
self-improvement, associating himself with a number of his fellow- 
students in a debating club, in which they discussed literary topics, 
and exercised themselves in composition. 

Goldsmith may likewise have belonged to this association, but 
his propensity was rather to mingle with the gay and thoughtless. 
On one occasion we find him implicated in an afiair that came 
nigh producing his expulsion. A report was brought to college 
that a scholar was in the hands of the bailiffs. This was an insult 
in which every gownsman felt himself involved. A number of the 
scholars flew to arms, and sallied forth to battle, headed by a hair- 
brained fellow nicknamed Gallows Walsh, noted for his aptness at 
mischief and fondness for riot. The stronghold of the bailiff was 
carried by storm, the scholar set at liberty, and the delinquent 
catch-pole borne off captive to the college, where, having no pump 



24 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

to put him under, they satisfied the demands of collegiate law by 
ducking him in an old cistern. 

Flushed with this signal victory, Gallows Walsh now harangued 
his followers, and proposed to break open Newgate, or the Black 
Dog, as the prison was called, -and effect a general jail-delivery. 
He was answered by shouts of concurrence, and away went the 
throng of madcap youngsters, fully bent upon putting an end to 
the tyranny of law. They were joined by the mob of the city, 
and made an attack upon the prison with true Irish precipitation 
and thoughtlessness, never having provided themselves with can- 
non to batter its stone walls. A few shots from the prison brought 
them to their senses, and they beat a hasty retreat, two of the 
townsmen being killed, and several wounded. 

A severe scrutiny of this affair took place at the University. 
Four students, who had been ringleaders, were expelled ; four 
others, who had been prominent in the affray, were publicly ad- 
monished ; among the latter was the unlucky Goldsmith. 

To make up for this disgrace, he gained, within a month after- 
w^ard, one of the minor prizes of the college. It is true it was one 
of the very smallest, amounting in pecuniary value to but thirty 
shillings, but it was the first distinction he had gained in his 
whole collegiate career. This turn of success and sudden influx of 
wealth proved too much for the head of our poor student. He 
forthwith gave a supper and dance at his chamber to a number of 
young persons of both sexes from the city, in direct violation of 
college rules. The unwonted sound of the fiddle reached the ears 
of the implacable Wilder. He rushed to the scene of unhallowed 
festivity, inflicted corporal punishment on the " father of the 
feast," and turned his astonished guests neck and heels out-of- 
doors. 

This filled the measure of poor Goldsmith's humiliations ; he felt 
degraded both within college and without. He dreaded the ridi- 
cule of his fellow-students for the ludicrous termination of his 
orgie, and he was ashamed to meet his city acquaintances after the 
degrading chastisement received in their presence, and after their 



SETTING OUT ON A JOUBNET. 25 

own ignominious expulsion. Above all, he felt it impossible to 
submit any longer to the insulting tyranny of Wilder : he deter- 
mined, therefore, to leave, not merely the college, but also his 
native land, and to bury what he conceived to be his irretrievable 
disgrace in some distant country. He accordingly sold his books 
and clothes, and sallied forth from the college walls the very next 
day, intending to embark at Cork for — he scarce knew where — 
America, or any other part beyond sea. With his usual heed- 
less imprudence, however, he loitered about Dublin until his 
finances were reduced to a shilling ; with this amount of specie 
he set out on his journey. 

For three whole days he subsisted on his shilling ; when that 
w^as spent, he parted with some of the clothes from his back, 
until, reduced almost to nakedness, he was four-and-twenty hours 
without food, insomuch that he declared a handful of gray peas, 
given to him by a girl at a wake, was one of the most delicious 
repasts he had ever tasted. Hunger, fatigue, and destitution 
brought down his spirit and calmed his anger. Fain would he 
have retraced his steps, could he have done so with any salvo for 
the lingerings of his pride. In his extremity he conveyed to his 
brother Henry information of his distress, and of the rash proj- 
ect on which he had set out. His aflfectionate brother hastened 
to his relief; furnished him with money and clothes ; soothed 
his feelings with gentle counsel ; prevailed upon him to return 
to college, and effected an indifferent reconciliation between him 
and Wilder. 

After this irregular sally upon life he remained nearly two 
years longer at the University, giving proofs of talent in occa- 
sional translations from the classics, for one of which he received 
a premium, awarded only to those who are the first in literary 
merit. Still he never made much figure at college, his natural 
disinclination to study being increased by the harsh treatment he 
continued to experience from his tutor. 

Among the anecdotes told of him while at college, is one indica- 
tive of that prompt but thoughtless and often whimsical benevo- 



26 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

lence which throughout life formed one of the most eccentric, 
yet endearing points of his character. He was engaged to break- 
fast one day with a college intimate, but failed to make his 
appearance. His friend repaired to his room, knocked at the 
door and was bidden to enter. To his surprise, he found Gold- 
smith in his bed, immersed to his chin in feathers. A serio-comic 
story explained the circumstance. In the course of the preceding 
evening's stroll he had met with a woman with five children, who 
implored his charity. Her husband was in the hospital ; she was 
just from the country, a stranger, and destitute, without food or 
shelter for her helpless offspring. This was too much for the 
kind heart of Goldsmith. He was almost as poor as herself, it 
is true, and had no money in his pocket ; but he brought her 
to the college-gate, gave her the blankets from his bed to cover 
her little brood, and part of his clothes for her to sell and purchase 
food ; and, finding himself cold during the night, had cut open 
his bed and buried himself among the feathers. 

At length, on the 27th of February, 1749, 0. S., he was ad- 
mitted to the degree of Bachelor of Arts, and took his final leave 
of the University. He was freed from college rule, that emanci- 
pation so ardently coveted by the thoughtless student, and which 
too generally launches him amid the cares, the hardships, and 
vicissitudes of life. He was freed, too, from the brutal tyranny of 
Wilder. If his kind and placable nature could retain any resent- 
ment for past injuries, it might have been gratified by learning 
subsequently that the passionate career of Wilder was terminated 
by a violent death in the course of a dissolute brawl; but 
Goldsmith took no delight in the misfortunes even of his enemies. 

He now returned to his friends, no longer the student to sport 
away the happy interval of vacation, but the anxious man, who 
is henceforth to shift for himself and make his way through the 
world. In fact, he had no legitimate home to return to. At 
the death of his father, the paternal house at Lissoy, in which 
Goldsmith had passed his childhood, had been taken by Mr. 
Hodson, who had married his sister Catherine. His mother had 



BETUEN TO FRIENDS. 27 

removed to Ballymahon, where she occupied a small house, and 
had to practise the severest frugality. His elder brother Henry 
served the curacy and taught the school of his late father's 
parish, and lived in narrow circumstances at Goldsmith's birth- 
place, the old goblin-house at Pallas. 

JSTone of his relatives were in circumstances to aid him with 
anything more than a temporary home, and the aspect of every 
one seemed somewhat changed. In fact, his career at college 
had disappointed his friends, and they began to doubt his being 
the great genius they had fancied him. He whimsically alludes 
to this circumstance in that piece of autobiography, "The Man 
in Black," in the Citizen of the World. 

"The first opportunity my father had of finding his expectations 
disappointed was in the middhng figure I made at the University: 
he had flattered himself that he should soon see me rising into the 
foremost rank in literary reputatiop, but was mortified to find me 
utterly unnoticed and unknown. His disappointment might have 
been partly ascribed to his having overrated my talents, and partly 
to my dislike of mathematical reasonings at a time when my imagi- 
nation and memory, yet unsatisfied, were more eager after new objects 
than desirous of reasoning upon those I knew. This, however, did 
not please my tutors, who observed, indeed, that I was a little dull, 
but at the same time allowed that I seemed to be very good-natured, 
and had no harm in me." ^ 

The only one of his relatives who did not appear to lose faith 
in him was his uncle Contarine. This kind and considerate man, 
it is said, saw in him a warmth of heart requiring some skill to 
direct, and a latent genius that wanted time to mature ; and 
these impressions none of his subsequent follies and irregularities 
wholly obliterated. His purse and affection, therefore, as well 
as his house, were now open to him, and he became his chief 
counsellor and director after his father's death. He urged him 
to prepare for holy orders ; and others of his relatives concurred 
in the advice. Goldsmith had a settled repugnance to a clerical 

1 Citizen of the World, letter xxvii. 



28 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

life. This has been ascribed by some to conscientious scruples, 
not considering himself of a temper and frame of mind for such 
a sacred office ; others attributed it to his roving propensities, and 
his desire to visit foreign countries ; he himself gives a whimsical 
objection in his biograjDhy of the "Man in Black": "To be 
obliged to wear a long wig when I liked a short one, or a black 
coat when I generally dressed in brown, I thought such a restraint 
upon my liberty that I absolutely rejected the proposal." 

In effect, however, his scruples were overruled, and he agreed 
to qualify himself for the office. He was now only twenty-one, 
and must pass two years of probation. They were two years of 
rather loitering, unsettled life. Sometimes he was at Lissoy, 
participating with thoughtless enjoyment in the rural sports and 
occupations of his brother-in-law, Mr. Hodson ; sometimes he was 
with his brother Henry, at the old goblin mansion at Pallas, 
assisting him occasionally in his school. The early marriage and 
unambitious retirement of Henry, though so subversive of the 
fond plans of his father, had proved happy in their results. He 
was already surrounded by a blooming family ; he was contented 
with his lot, beloved by his parishioners, and lived in the daily 
practice of all the amiable virtues, and the immediate enjoyment 
of their reward. Of the tender affection inspired in the breast of 
Goldsmith by the constant kindness of this excellent brother, 
and of the longing recollection with which, in the lonely wander- 
ings of after-years, he looked back upon this scene of domestic 
felicity, we have a touching instance in the well-known opening 
to his poem of The Traveller : — 

"Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow, 
Or by the lazy Scheld or wandering Po ; 

***** 
Where'er I roam, whatever realms to see, 
My heart untravell'd fondly turns to thee ; 
Still to my brother turns with ceaseless pain, 
And drags at each remove a lengthening chain. 

Eternal blessings crown my earliest friend, 
And round his dwelling guardian saints attend ; 



BOBEET BBY ANTON. 29 

Bless'd be that spot, where cheerful guests retire 

To pause from toil, and trim their evening fire; 

Bless'd that abode, where want and pain repair, 

And every stranger finds a ready chair : 

Bless'd be those feasts with simple plenty crown'd 

Where all the ruddy family around 

Laugh at the jests or pranks that never fail, 

Or sigh with pity at some mournful tale ; 

Or press the bashful stranger to his food, 

And learn the luxury of doing good." 

During this loitering life Goldsmith pursued no study, but 
rather amused himself with miscellaneous reading ; such as biog- 
raphy, travels, poetry, novels, plays — everything, in short, that 
administered to the imagination. Sometimes he strolled along 
the banks of the river Inny ; where, in after-years, when he had 
become famous, his favorite seats and haunts used to be pointed 
out. Often he joined in the rustic sports of the villagers, and 
became adroit at throwing the sledge, a favorite feat of activity 
and strength in Ireland. Recollections of these " healthful sports " 
we find in his Deserted Village : — 

" How often have I bless'd the coming day. 
When toil remitting lent its turn to play, 
And all the village train, from labor free. 
Led up their sports beneath the spreading tree : 
And many a gambol frolicked o'er the ground. 
And sleights of art and feats of strength went round." 

A boon companion in all his rural amusements was his cousin 
and college crony, Robert Bryanton, with whom he sojourned oc- 
casionally at Ballymulvey House in the neighborhood. They used 
to make excursions about the country on foot, sometimes fishing, 
sometimes hunting otter in the Inny. They got up a country club 
at the little inn of Ballymahon, of which Goldsmith soon became 
the oracle and prime wit ; astonishing his unlettered associates by 
his learning, and being considered capital at a song and a story. 
From the rustic conviviality of the inn at Ballymahon, and the 
company which used to assemble there, it is surmised that lie 



30 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

took some hints in after-life for his picturing of Tony Lumpkin 
and his associates : " Dick Muggins, the exciseman ; Jack Slang, 
the horse-cloctor ; little Aminidab, that grinds the music-box, and 
Tom Twist, that spins the pewter platter." Nay, it is thought 
that Tony's drinking-song at the " Three Jolly Pigeons " was but 
a revival of one of the convivial catches at Ballymahon : — 

" Then come put the jorum about, 
And let us be merry and clever, 
Our hearts and our liquors are stout, 

Here's the Three Jolly Pigeons forever. 
Let some cry of woodcock or hare, 

Your bustards, your ducks, and your widgeons ; 
But of all the gay birds in the air, 

Here's a health to the Three Jolly Pigeons. 

Toroddle, toroddle, toroll." 

Notwithstanding all these accomplishments and this rural 
popularity, his friends began to shake their heads and shrug their 
shoulders when they spoke of him ; and his brother Henry noted 
with anything but satisfaction his frequent visits to the club at 
Ballymahon. He emerged, however, unscathed from this danger- 
ous ordeal, more fortunate in this respect than his comrade Bryan- 
ton j but he retained throughout life a fondness for clubs : often, 
too, in the course of his checkered career, he looked back to this 
period of rural sports and careless enjoyments as one of the few 
sunny spots of his cloudy life ; and though he ultimately rose to 
associate with birds of a finer feather, his heart would still yearn 
in secret after the " Three Jolly Pigeons." 



CHAPTER IIL 

The time had now arrived for Goldsmith to apply for orders, 
and he presented himself accordingly before the bishop of Elphin 
for ordination. We have stated his great objection to clerical life, 
the obligation to wear a black coat ; and, whimsical as it may 
appear, dress seems in fact to have formed an obstacle to his 



REJECTED BY THE BISHOP. 31 

entrance into the church. He had ever a passion for clothing his 
sturdy but awkward little person in gay colors ; and on this solemn 
occasion, when it was to be supposed his garb would be of suit- 
able gravity, he appeared luminously arrayed in scarlet breeches ! 
He was rejected by the bishop : some say for want of sufficient 
studious preparation ; his rambles and frolics with Bob Bryanton, 
and his revels with the club at Ballymahon, having been much in 
the way of his theological studies ; others attribute his rejection 
to reports of his college irregularities, which the bishop had 
received from his old tyrant Wilder ; but those who look into the 
matter with more knowing eyes, pronounce the scarlet breeches to 
have been the fundamental objection. " My friends," says Gold- 
smith, speaking through his humorous representative, the "Man 
in Black," — " my friends were now perfectly satisfied I was 
undone ; and yet they thought it a pity for one that had not the 
least harm in him, and was so very good-natured." His uncle 
Contarine, however, still remained unwavering in his kindness, 
though much less sanguine in his expectations. He now looked 
round for a humbler sphere of action, and through his influence 
and exertions Oliver was received as tutor in the family of a Mr. 
riinn, a gentleman of the neighborhood. The situation was ap- 
parently respectable ; he had his seat at the table ; and joined 
the family in their domestic recreations and their evening game at 
cards. There was a servility, however, in his position, which was 
not to his taste ; nor did his deference for the family increase 
upon familiar intercourse. He charged a member of it with 
unfair play at cards. A violent altercation ensued, which ended 
in his throwing up his situation as tutor. On being paid off he 
found himself in possession of an unheard-of amount of money. 
His wandering propensity and his desire to see the world were 
instantly in the ascendency. Without communicating his plans 
or intentions to his friends, he procured a good horse, and, with 
thirty pounds in his pocket, made his second sally forth into the 
world. 

The worthy niece and housekeeper of the hero of La Mancha 



32 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

could not have been more surprised and dismayed at one of the 
Don's clandestine expeditions than were the mother and friends of 
Goldsmith, when they heard of his mysterious departure. Weeks 
elapsed, and nothing was seen or heard of him. It was feared 
that he had left the country on one of his wandering freaks, and 
his poor mother was reduced almost to despair, when one day he 
arrived at her door almost as forlorn in plight as the prodigal son. 
Of his thirty jDOunds not a shilling was left ; and, instead of the 
goodly steed on which he had issued forth on his errantry, he was 
mounted on a sorry little pony, which he had nicknamed Fiddle- 
back. As soon as his mother was well assured of his safety, she 
rated him soundly for his inconsiderate conduct. His brothers 
and sisters, who were tenderly attached to him, interfered, and 
succeeded in mollifying her ire ; and whatever lurking anger the 
good dame might have, was no doubt effectually vanquished by 
the following whimsical narrative which he drew up at his 
brother's house, and dispatched to her : — 

"My dear mother, if you will sit down and calmly listen to what I 
say, you shall be fully resolved in every one of those many questions 
you have asked me. I went to Cork and converted my horse, which 
you prize so much higher than Fiddle-back, into cash, took my pas- 
sage in a ship bound for America, and, at the same time, paid the 
captain for my freight and all the other expenses of my voyage. But 
it so happened tliat the wind did not answer for three weeks ; and you 
know, mother, that I could not command the elements. My misfor- 
tune was, that, when the wind served, I happened to be with a party 
in the country, and my friend, the captain, never inquired after me, 
but set sail with as much indifference as if I had been on board. The 
remainder of my time I employed in the city and its environs, view- 
ing everything curious, and you know no one can starve while he has 
money in his pocket. 

"Reduced, however, to my last two guineas, I began to think of 
my dear mother and friends whom I had left behind me, and so 
bought that generous beast. Fiddle-back, and bade adieu to Cork with 
only five shillings in my pocket. This, to be sure, was but a scanty 
allowance for man and horse towards a journey of above a hundred 
miles ; but I did not despair, for I knew I must find friends on the 
road. 



A HOSPITABLE FRIEND. 33 

" I recollected particularly an old and faithful acquaintance I made 
at college, who had often and earnestly pressed me to spend a summer 
with him, and he lived but eight miles from Cork. This circumstance 
of vicinity he would expatiate on to me with peculiar emphasis. ' We 
shall,' says he, 'enjoy- the delights of both city and country, and you 
shall command my stable and my purse.' 

" However, upon the way I met a poor woman all in tears, who 
told me her husband had been arrested for a debt he was not able to 
pay, and that his eight children must now starve, bereaved as they 
were of his industry, which had been their only support. I thought 
myself at home, being not far from my good friend's house, and there- 
fore parted with a moiety of all my store ; and pray, mother, ought I 
not to have given her the other half-crown, for what she got would be 
of little use to her ? However, I soon arrived at the mansion of my 
affectionate friend, guarded by the vigilance of a huge mastiff, who 
flew at me and would have torn me to pieces but for the assistance of 
a woman, whose countenance was not less grim than that of the dog ; 
yet she with great humanity relieved me from the jaws of this Cer- 
berus, and was prevailed on to carry up my name to her master. 

" Without suffering me to wait long, my old friend, who was then 
recovering from a severe fit of sickness, came down in his nightcap, 
nightgown, and slippers, and embraced me with the most cordial wel- 
come, showed me in, and, after giving me a history of his indisposi- 
tion, assured me that he considered himself peculiarly fortunate in 
having under his roof the man he most loved on earth, and whose 
stay with him must, above all things, contribute to perfect his re- 
covery. I now repented sorely I had not given the poor woman the 
other half-crown, as I thought all my bills of humanity would be 
punctually answered by this worthy man. I revealed to him my 
whole soul ; I opened to him all my distresses ; and freely owned that 
I had but one half-crown in my pocket ; but that now, like a ship 
after weathering out the storm, I considered myself secure in a safe 
and hospitable harbor. He made no answer, but walked about the 
room, rubbing his hands as one in deep study. This I imputed to the 
sympathetic feelings of a tender heart, which increased my esteem for 
him, and, as that increased, I gave the most favorable interpretation 
to his silence. I construed it into delicacy of sentiment, as if he 
dreaded to wound my pride by expressing his commiseration in 
words, leaving his generous conduct to speak for itself. 

" It now approached six o'clock in the evening ; and as I had eaten 
no breakfast, and as my spirits were raised, my appetite for dinner 



34 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

grew imcommonly keen. At length the old woman came into the 
room with two plates, one spoon, and a dirty cloth, which she laid up- 
on the table. This appearance, without increasing my spirits, did not 
diminish my appetite. My protectress soon returned with a small 
bowl of sago, a small porringer of sour milk, a loaf of stale brown 
bread, and the heel of an old cheese all over crawling with mites. My 
friend apologized that his illness obliged him to live on slops, and that 
better fare was not in the house ; observing, at the same time, that a 
milk diet was certainly the most healthful ; and at eight o'clock he again 
recommended a regular life, declaring that for his part he would lie 
down with the lamb and rise with the lark. My hunger was at this 
time so exceedingly sharp that I wished for another slice of the loaf, 
but was obhged to go to bed without even that refreshment. 

" This lenten entertainment I had received made me resolve to 
depart as soon as possible ; accordingly, next morning, when I spoke 
of going, he did not oppose my resolution ; he rather commended my 
design, adding some very sage counsel upon the occasion. ' To be 
sure,' said he, ' the longer you stay away from your mother, the more 
you will grieve her and your other friends ; and possibly they are 
already afflicted at hearing of this foolish expedition you have made.' 
Notwithstanding all this, and without any hope of softening such a 
sordid heart, I again renewed the tale of my distress, and asking ' how 
he thought I could travel above a hundred miles upon one half- 
crown ? ' I begged to borrow a single guinea, which I assured him 
should be repaid with thanks. ' And you know, sir,' said I, ' it is no 
more than I have done for you.' To which he firmly answered, 
' Why, look you, Mr. Goldsmith, that is neither here nor there. I 
have paid you all you ever lent me, and this sickness of mine has left me 
bare of cash. But I have bethought myself of a conveyance for you ; 
sell your horse, and I will furnish you a much better one to ride on.' I 
readily grasped at his proposal, and begged to see the nag ; on which 
he led me to his bed-chamber, and from under the bed he pulled out a 
stout oak stick. ' Here he is,' said he ; ' take this in your hand, and 
it will carry you to your mother's with more safety than such a horse 
as you ride.' I was in dpubt, when I got it into my hand, whether I 
should not, in the first place, apply it to his pate ; but a rap at the 
street-door made the wretch fly to it, and when I returned to the parlor 
he introduced me, as if nothing of the kind had happened, to the 
gentleman who entered, as Mr. Goldsmith, his most ingenious and 
worthy friend, of whom he had so often heard him speak with rapture. 
I could scarcely compose myself ; and must have betrayed indignation 



PLEASANT BAYS. 35 

in my mien to the stranger, who was a counsellor-at-law in the neighbor- 
hood, a man of engaging aspect and polite address. 

" After spending an liour, lie asked my friend and me to dine with 
him at his house. This I declined at first, as I wished to have no 
farther communication with my hospitable friend ; but at the solicita- 
tion of both I at last consented, determined as I was by two motives : 
one, that I was prejudiced in favor of the looks and manner of the 
counsellor ; and the other, that I stood in need of a comfortable 
dinner. And there, indeed, I found everything that I could wish, 
abundance without profusion, and elegance without affectation. In 
the evening, when my old friend, who had eaten very plentifully at 
his neighbor's table, but talked again of lying down with the lamb, 
made a motion to me for retiring, our generous host requested I 
should take a bed with him, upon which I plainly told my old friend 
that he might go home and take care of the horse he had given me, 
but that I should never reenter his doors. He went away with a 
laugh, leaving me to add this to the other little things the counsellor 
already knew of his plausible neighbor. 

"And now, my dear mother, I found sufficient to reconcile me to 
all my follies ; for here I spent three whole days. The counsellor 
had two sweet girls to his daughters, who played enchantingly on the 
harpsichord ; and yet it was but a melancholy pleasure I felt the first 
time I heard them ; for that being the first time also that either of 
them had touched the instrument since their mother's death, I saw the 
tears in silence trickle down their father's cheeks. I every day en- 
deavored to go away, but every day was pressed and obliged to stay. 
On my going, the counsellor offered me his purse, with a horse and 
servant to convey me home ; but the latter I declined, and only took 
a guinea to bear my necessary expenses on the road. 

Oliver Goldsmith. 

" To Mrs. Anne Goldsmith, Ballymahon." 

Such is the story given by the poet-errant of this his second 
sally in quest of adventures. We cannot but think it was here 
and there touched up a httle with the fanciful pen of the future 
essayist, with a view to amuse his mother and soften her vexation ; 
but even in these respects it is valuable as showing the early play 
of his humor, and his happy knack of extracting sweets from 
that worldly experience which to others yields nothing but 
bitterness. 



36 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 



CHAPTER IV. 

A NEW consultation was held, among Goldsmith's friends as to 
his future course, and it was determined he should try the law. . 
His uncle Contarine agreed to advance the necessary funds, and 
actually furnished him with fifty pounds, with which he set off for 
London, to enter on his studies at the Temple. Unfortunately, he 
fell in company at Dublin with a Roscommon acquaintance, one 
whose wits had been sharpened, about town, who beguiled him into 
a gambling-house, and soon left him as penniless as when he 
bestrode the redoubtable Fiddle-back. 

He was so ashamed of this fresh instance of gross heedlessness 
and imprudence, that he remained some time in Dublin without 
communicating to his friends his destitute condition. They heard 
of it, however, and he was invited back to the country, and indul- 
gently forgiven by his generous uncle, but less readily by his 
mother, who was mortified and disheartened at seeing all her 
early hopes of him so repeatedly blighted. His brother Henry, 
too, began to lose patience at these successive failures, resulting 
from thoughtless indiscretion ; and a quarrel took place, which 
for some time interrupted their usually affectionate intercourse. 

The only home where poor erring Goldsmith still received a 
welcome, was the parsonage of his affectionate forgiving uncle. 
Here he used to talk of literature with the good simple-hearted 
man, and delight him and his daughter with his verses. Jane, 
his early playmate, was now the woman grown ; their intercourse 
was of a more intellectual kind than formerly ; they discoursed of 
poetry and music ; she played on the harpsichord, and he accom- 
panied her with his flute. The music may not have been very 
artistic, as he never performed but by ear ; it had probably as 
much merit as the poetry, which, if we may judge by the follow- 
ing specimen, was as yet but juvenile : — 



A VALENTINE. 37 

TO A YOUNG LADY ON VALENTINE'S DAY. 

WITH THE DRAWING OF A HEART. 

With submission at your shrine, 
Comes a heart your Valentine ; 
From the side where once it grew, 
See it panting flies to you. 
Take it, fair one, to your breast, 
Soothe the fluttering thing to rest ; 
Let the gentle, spotless toy 
Be your sweetest, greatest joy ; 
Every night when wrapp'd in sleep, 
Next your heart the conquest keep ; 
Or if dreams your fancy move, 
Hear it whisper me and love ; 
Then in pity to the swain. 
Who must heartless else remain. 
Soft as gentle dewy show'rs, 
Slow descend on April flow'rs ; 
Soft as gentle riv'lets glide. 
Steal unnoticed to my side ; 
If the gem you have to spare. 
Take your own and place it there. 

If this Valentine was intended for the fair Jane, and expressive 
of a tender sentiment indulged by the stripling poet, it was un- 
availing ; as not long afterwards she was married to a Mr. 
Lawder. We trust, however, it was but a poetical passion of 
that transient kind which grows up in idleness and exhales itself 
in rhyme. While Oliver was thus piping and poetizing at the 
parsonage, his uncle Contarine received a visit from Dean Gold- 
smith of Cloyne, — a kind of magnate in the wide but improvi- 
dent family connection, throughout which his word was law and 
^almost gospel. This august dignitary was pleased to discover 
signs of talent in Oliver, and suggested that, as he had attempted 
divinity and law without success, he should now try physic. The 
advice came from too important a source to be disregarded, and it 
was determined to send him to Edinburgh to commence his studies. 



38 ^ OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

The Dean having given the advice, added to it, we trust, his 
blessing, but no money ; that was furnished from the scantier 
purses of Goldsmith's brother, his sister (Mrs. Hodson), and his 
ever-ready uncle, Contarine. 

It was in the autumn of 1752 that Goldsmith arrived in Edin- 
burgh. His outset in that city came near adding to the list of 
his indiscretions and disasters. Having taken lodgings at haphaz- 
ard, he left his trunk there, containing all his worldly effects, and 
sallied forth to see the town. After sauntering about the streets 
until a late hour, he thought of returning home, when, to his con- 
fusion, he found he had not acquainted himself with the name 
either of his landlady or of the street in which she lived. Fortu- 
nately, in the height of his whimsical perplexity, he met the 
cawdy or porter who had carried his trunk, and who now served 
him as a guide. 

He did not remain long in the lodgings in which he had put up. 
The hostess was too adroit at that hocuspocus of the table which 
often is practised in cheap boarding-houses. 'No one could conjure 
a single joint through a greater variety of forms. A loin of mut- 
ton, according to Goldsmith's account, would serve him and two 
fellow-students a whole week. " A brandered chop was served up 
one day, a fried steak another, coUops with oniou-sauce a third, 
and so on until the fleshy parts were quite consumed, when finally 
a dish of broth was manufactured from the bones on the seventh 
day, and the landlady rested from her labors." Goldsmith had a 
good-humored mode of taking things, and for a short time amused 
himself with the shifts and expedients of his landlady, which 
struck him in a ludicrous manner ; he soon, however, fell in with 
fellow-students from his own country, whom he joined at more 
eligible quarters. 

He now attended medical lectures, and attached himself to an 
association of students called the Medical Society. He set out, as 
usual, with the best intentions, but, as usual, soon fell into idle, 
convivial, thoughtless habits. Edinburgh was indeed a place of 
sore trial for one of his temperament. Convivial meetings were 



THE MOCK GHOST. 39 

all the vogue, and the tavern was the universal rallying-place 
of good-fellowship. And then Goldsmith's intimacies lay chiefly 
among the Irish students, who were always ready for a wild freak 
and frolic. Among them he was a prime favorite and somewhat 
of a leader, from his exuberance of spirits, his vein of humor, and 
his talent at singing an Irish song and telling an Irish story. 

His usual carelessness in money-matters attended him. Though 
his supplies from home were scanty and irregular, he never could 
bring himself into habits of prudence and economy ; often he was 
stripped of all his present finances at play ; often he lavished 
them away in fits of unguarded charity or generosity. Sometimes 
among his boon companions he assumed a ludicrous swagger in 
money-matters, which no one afterward was more ready than him- 
self to laugh at. At a convivial meeting with a number of his 
fellow-students he suddenly proposed to draw lots with any one 
present which of the two should treat the whole party to the play. 
The moment the proposition had bolted from his lips, his heart 
was in his throat. " To my great though secret joy," said he, 
" they all declined the challenge. Had it been accepted, and had 
I proved the loser, a part of my wardrobe must have been pledged 
in order to raise the money." 

At another of these meetings there was an earnest dispute on 
the question of ghosts, some being firm believers in the possibility 
of departed spirits returning to visit their friends and familiar 
haunts. One of the disputants set sail the next day for London, 
but the vessel put back through stress of weather. His return 
was unknown except to one of the believers in ghosts, who con- 
certed with him a trick to be played off on the opposite party. 
In the evening, at a meeting of the students, the discussion was 
renewed ; and one of the most strenuous opposers of ghosts was 
asked whether he considered himself proof against ocular demon- 
stration. He persisted in his scoffing. Some solemn process of 
conjuration was performed, and the comrade supposed to be on -his 
way to London made his appearance. The effect was fatal. The 
unbeliever fainted at the sight, and ultimately went mad. We 



40 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

have no account of what share Goldsmith took in this transaction, 
at which he was present. 

The following letter to his friend Bryanton contains some of. 
Goldsmith's impressions concerning Scotland and its inhabitants, 
and gives indications of that humor which characterized some of 
his later writings. 

" Robert Bryanton, at Ballymahon, Ireland. 

"Edinburgh, September 26th, 1753. 

"My dear Bob, — 

"How many good excuses (and you know I was ever good at an 
excuse) might I call up to vindicate my past shameful silence. I 
might tell how I wrote a long letter on my first coming hither, and 
seem vastly angry at my not receiving an answer; I might allege 
that business (with business you know I was always pestered) had 
never given me time to finger a pen. But I suppress those and 
twenty more as plausible, and as easily invented, since they might be 
attended with a slight inconvenience of being known to be lies. Let 
me then speak truth. An hereditary indolence (I have it from the 
mother's side) has hitherto prevented my writing to you, and still 
prevents my v^^iting at least twenty-five letters more, due to my 
friends in Ireland. No turnspit-dog gets up into his wheel with more 
reluctance than I sit down to write ; yet no dog ever loved the roast 
meat he turns better than I do him I now address. 

" Yet what shall I say now I am entered ? Shall I tire you with a 
description of this unfruitful country ; where I must lead you over 
their hills all brown with heath, or tlieir valleys scarcely able to feed 
a rabbit ? Man alone seems to be the only creature who has arrived 
to the natural size in this poor soil. Every part of the country pre- 
sents the same dismal landscape. No grove, nor brook, lend their 
music to cheer the stranger, or make the inhabitants forget their pov- 
erty. Yet with all these disadvantages to call him down to humility, 
a Scotchman is one of the proudest things alive. The poor have pride 
ever ready to relieve them. If mankind should happen to despise 
them, they are masters of their own admiration ; and that they can 
plentifully bestow upon themselves. 

" From their pride and poverty, as I take it, results one advantage 
this country enjoys ; namely, the gentlemen here are much better 
bred than among us. No such character here as our fox-hunters : 



SKETCHES OF SCOTLAND. 41 

and they have expressed great surprise when I informed them that 
some men in Ireland, of one thousand pounds a year, spend their 
whole lives in running after a hare, and drinking to be drunk. Truly, 
if such a being, equipped in his hunting-dress, came among a circle of 
Scotch gentry, they would behold him with the same astonishment 
that a countryman does King George on horseback. 

"The men here have generally high cheek bones, and are lean and 
swarthy, fond of action, dancing in particular. Now that I have 
mentioned dancing, let me say something of their balls, which are 
very frequent here. When a stranger enters the dancing-hall, he 
sees one end of the room taken up by the ladies, who sit dismally in a 
group by themselves ; — in the other end stand their pensive partners 
that are to be ; — but no more intercourse between the sexes than 
there is between two countries at war. The ladies indeed may ogle, 
and the gentlemen sigh ; but an embargo is laid on any closer com- 
merce. At length, to interrupt hostilities, the lady directress, or 
intendant, or what you will, pitches upon a lady and gentleman to 
walk a minuet ; which they perform with a formality that approaches 
to despondence. After five or six couple have thus walked the gaunt- 
let, all sta,nd up to country dances ; each gentleman furnished with a 
partner from the aforesaid lady directress ; so they dance much, say 
nothing, and thus concludes our assembly. I told a Scotch gentleman 
that such profound silence resembled the ancient procession of the 
Roman matrons in honor of Ceres ; and the Scotch ge;ntleman told me 
(and faith I believe he was right) that I was a very great pedant for 
my pains. 

" Now I am come to the ladies ; and to show that I love Scotland, 
and everything that belongs to so charming a country, I insist on it, 
and will give him leave to break my head that denies it — that the 
Scotch ladies are ten thousand times finer and handsomer than the 
Irish. To be sure, now, I see your sisters Betty and Peggy vastly 
surprised at my partiality, — but tell them flatly, I don't value 

them — or their fine skins, or eyes, or good sense, or , a potato ; 

— for I say, and will maintain it ; and as a convincing proof (I am in 
a great passion) of what I assert, the Scotch ladies say it themselves. 
But to be less serious ; where will you find a language so prettily be- 
come a pretty mouth as the broad Scotch ? And the women here 
speak it in its highest purity; for instance, teach one of your young 
ladies at home to pronounce the ' Whoar wull I gong ? ' with a be- 
coming widening of mouth, and I'll lay my life they'll wound every 
hearer. 



42 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

" We have no such character here as a coquette, but alas ! how 
many envious prudes ! Some days ago I walked into my Lord Kil- 
coubry's (don't be surprised, my lord is but a glover), i when the 
Duchess of Hamilton (that fair who sacrificed her beauty to her 
ambition, and her inward peace to a title and gilt equipage) passed 
by in her chariot ; her battered husband, or more properly the 
guardian of her charms, sat by her side. Straight' envy began, in 
the shape of no less than three ladies who sat with me, to find faults 
in her faultless form. — ' For my part,' says the first, 'I think what 
I always thought, that the Duchess has too much of the red in her 
complexion.' ' Madam, I am of your opinion,' says the second ; ' I 
think her face has a palish cast too much on the delicate order.' 
'And, let me tell you,' added the third lady, whose mouth was 
puckered up to the size of an issue, ' that the Duchess has fine lips, but 
she wants a mouth. ' — At this every lady drew up her mouth as if 
going to pronounce the letter P. 

"But how ill, my Bob, does it become me to ridicule women with 
whom^I have scarcely any correspondence ! There are, 'tis certain, 
handsome women here ; and 'tis certain they have handsome men to 
keep them company. An ugly and poor man is society only for 
himself ; and such society the world lets me enjoy in great abundance. 
Fortune has given you circumstances, and Nature a person to look 
charming in the eyes of the fair. Nor do I envy my dear Bob such 
blessings, while I may sit down and laugh at the world and at my- 
self — the most ridiculous object in it. But you see I am grown 
downright splenetic, and perhaps the fit may continue till I receive 
an answer to this. I know you cannot send me much news from 
Ballymahon, but such as it is, send it all ; everything you send will 
be agreeable to me. 

"Has George Conway put up a sign yet; or John Binley left off 

drinking drams ; or Tom Allen got a new wig ? But I leave you to 

your own choice what to write. While I live, know you have a true 

friend in yours, &c., &c., &c. „ ^ ^ 

•^ ' " Oliver Goldsmith. 

"P.S. — Give my sincere respects (not compliments, do you mind) 
to your agreeable family, and give my service to my mother, if you 
see her ; for, as you express it in Ireland, I have a sneaking kindness 
for her still. Direct to me, , Student in Physic, in Edinburgh." 

1 William Maclellan, who claimed the title, and whose son succeeded iti 
establishing the claim in 1773. The father is said to have voted at the 
election of the sixteen Peers for Scotland ; and to have sold gloves in 
the lobby at this and other public assemblages. 



TBIALS OF TOADYISM. 43 

Nothing worthy of preservation appeared from his pen during 
his residence in Edinburgh ; and indeed his poetical powers, 
highly as they had been estimated by his friends, had not as yet 
produced anything of superior merit. He made on one occasion a 
month's excursion to the Highlands. "I set out the first day on 
foot," says he, in a letter to his uncle Contarine, "but an ill- 
natured corn I have on my toe has for the future prevented that 
cheap mode of travelling ; so the second day I hired a horse, 
about the size of a ram, and he walked away (trot he could not) 
as pensive as his master." 

During his residence in Scotland his convivial talents gained 
him at one time attentions in a high quarter, which, however, he 
had the good sense to appreciate correctly. "I have spent," 
says he, in one of his letters, "more than a fortnight every second 
day at the Duke of Hamilton's ; but it seems they like me more 
as a jester than as a companion, so I disdained so servile an 
employment as unworthy my calling as a physician." Here we 
again find the origin of another passage in his autobiography, 
under the character of the "Man in Black," wherein that worthy 
figures as a flatterer to a great man. 

"At first," says he, "I was surprised that the situation of a 
flatterer at a great man's table could be thought disagreeable ; there 
was no great trouble in listening attentively when liis lordship spoke, 
and laughing when he looked round for applause. This, even good 
manners might have obliged me to perform. I found, however, too 
soon, his lordship was a greater dunce than myself, and from that 
moment flattery was at an end. I now rather aimed at setting him 
right than at receiving his absurdities with submission : to flatter 
those we do not know is an easy task ; but to flatter our intimate ac- 
quaintances, all whose foibles are strongly in our eyes, is drudgery 
insupportable. Every time I now opened my lips in praise, my false- 
hood went to my conscience ; his lordship soon perceived me to be 
very unfit for his service : I was therefore discharged ; my patron at 
the same time being graciously pleased to observe that he believed I 
was tolerably good-natured and had not the least harm in me." 

After spending two winters at Edinburgh, Goldsmith prepared 
to finish his medical studies on the Continent, for which his 



44 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

uncle Cbntarine agreed to furnish the funds. " I mtend, " said 
he,, in a letter to his uncle, " to visit Paris, where the great 
Farheim, Petit, and Du Hamel de Monceau instruct their pupils 
in all the branches of medicine. They speak French, and con- 
sequently I shall have much the advantage of most of my country- 
men, as I am perfectly acquainted with that language, and few who 
leave Ireland are so. I shall spend the spring and summer in 
Paris, and the beginning of next winter go to Leyden. The great 
Albinus is still alive there, and 'twill be proper to go, though only 
to have it said that we have studied in so famous a university. 

"As I shall not have another opportunity of receiving money 
from your bounty till my return to Ireland, so I have drawn for 
the last sum that I hope I shall ever trouble you for ; 'tis <£20. 
And now, dear sir, let me here acknowledge the humility of the 
station in which you found me ; let me tell how I was despised 
by most, and hateful to myself Poverty, hopeless poverty, was 
my lot, and Melancholy was beginning to make me her own, when 

you But I stop here, to inquire how your health goes on ? 

How does my cousin Jenny, and has she recovered her late com- 
plaint ? How does my poor Jack Goldsmith ? I fear his disorder 
is of such a nature as he won't easily recover. I wish, my dear sir, 
you would make me happy by another letter before I go abroad, for 
there I shall hardly hear from you. . . . Give my — how shall I 
express it? — give my earnest love to Mr. and Mrs. Lawder." 

Mrs. Lawder was Jane, his early playmate — the object of his 
valentine — his first poetical inspiration. She had been for some 
time married. 

Medical instruction, it will be perceived, was the ostensible 
motive for this visit to the Continent, but the real one, in all 
probability, was his long-cherished desire to see foreign parts. This, 
however, he would not acknowledge even to himself, but sought to 
reconcile his roving propensities with some grand moral purpose. 
"I esteem the traveller who instructs the heart," says he, in one of 
his subsequent writings, " but I despise him who only indulges the 
imagination. A man who leaves home to mend himself and others. 



A poet's pubse. 45 

is a philosopher ; but he who goes from country to comitry, guided 
by the bUnd impulse of curiosity, is only a vagabond." He, of 
course, was to travel as a philosopher, and in truth his outfits for 
a Continental tour were in character. " I shall carry just <£33 to 
France," said he, "with good store of clothes, shirts, (fee, and that 
with economy will suffice." He forgot to make mention of his 
flute, which it will be found had occasionally to come in play when 
economy could not replenish his purse, nor philosophy find him a 
supper. Thus slenderly provided with money, prudence, or ex- 
perience, and almost as slightly guarded against " hard knocks " 
as the hero of La Mancha, whose head-piece was half iron, half 
pasteboard, he made his final sally forth upon the world ; hoping 
all things ; believing all things : little anticipating the checkered 
ills in store for him ; little thinking when he penned his valedic- 
tory letter to his good uncle Contarine, that he was never to see 
him more ; never to return after all his wandering to the friend of 
his infancy : never to revisit his early and fondly remembered 
haunts at "sweet Lissoy" and Ballymahon. 



CHAPTER V. 

His usual indiscretion attended G-oldsmith at the very outset 
of his foreign enterprise. He had intended to take shipping at 
Leith for Holland ; but on arriving at that port, he found a ship 
about to sail for Bordeaux, with six agreeable passengers, whose 
acquaintance he had probably made at the inn. He was not a 
man to resist a sudden impulse ; so, instead of embarking for Hol- 
land, he found himself ploughing the seas on his way to the other 
side of the Continent. Scarcely had the ship been two days 
at sea, when she was driven by stress of weather to Newcastle- 
upon-Tyne. Here " of course " Goldsmith and his agreeable 
fellow-passengers found it expedient to go on shore and " refresh 
themselves after the fatigues of the voyage." " Of course " they 
frolicked and made merry until a late hour in the evening, when, 



46 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

in the midst of their hilarity, the door was burst open, and a ser- 
geant and twelve grenadiers entered with fixed bayonets, and took 
the whole convivial party prisoners. 

It seems that the agreeable companions with whom our green- 
horn had struck up such a sudden intimacy, were Scotchmen in 
the French service, who had been in Scotland enlisting recruits for 
the French army. 

In vain Goldsmith protested his innocence ; he was marched off 
with his fellow-travellers to prison, whence he with difficulty ob- 
tained his release at the end of a fortnight. With his customary 
facility, however, at palliating his misadventures, he found every- 
thing turn out for the best. His imprisonment saved his life, for 
during his detention the ship proceeded on her voyage, but was 
wrecked at the mouth of the Garonne, and all on board perished. 

Goldsmith's second embarkation was for Holland direct, and in 
nine days he arrived at Rotterdam, whence he proceeded, without 
any more deviations, to Leyden. He gives a whimsical picture, in 
one of his letters, of the appearance of the Hollanders. " The 
modern Dutchman is quite a different creature from him of former 
times : he in everything imitates a Frenchman but in his easy, 
disengaged air. He is vastly ceremonious, and is, perhaps, exactly 
what a Frenchman might have been in the reign of Louis XIV. 
Such are the better bred. But the downright Hollander is one 
of the oddest figures in nature. Upon a lank head of hair he wears 
a half-cocked narrow hat, laced with black ribband ; no coat, but 
seven waistcoats and nine pair of breeches, so that his hips reach 
up almost to his armpits. This well-clothed vegetable is now fit 
to see company or make love. But what a pleasing creature is 
the object of his appetite ! why, she wears a large fur cap, with a 
deal of Flanders lace ; and for every pair of breeches he carries, 
she puts on two petticoats. 

" A Dutch lady burns nothing about her phlegmatic admirer 
but his tobacco. You must know, sir, every woman carries in her 
hand a stove of coals, which, when she sits, she snugs under her 
petticoats, and at this chimney, dozing Strephon lights his pipe." 



SKETCHES OF HOLLAND. . 47 

In the same letter he contrasts Scotland and Holland. " There, 
hills and rocks intercept every prospect ; here, it is all a con- 
tinued plain. There you might see a well-dressed Duchess issu- 
ing from a dirty close, and here a dirty Dutchman inhabiting a 
palace. The Scotch may be compared to a tulip, planted in 
dung ; but I can never see a Dutchman in his own house, but I 
think of a magnificent Egyptian temple dedicated to an ox." 

The country itself awakened his admiration. "Nothing," said 
he, " can equal its beauty ; wherever I turn my eyes, fine houses, 
elegant gardens, statues, grottos, vistas, present themselves ; but 
when you enter their towns, you are charmed beyond description. 
No misery is to be seen here, every one is usefully employed." 
And again, in his noble description in The Traveller : — 

" To men of other minds my fancy flies, 
Imbosom'd in the deep where Holland lies. 
Methinks her patient sons before me stand, 
Where the broad ocean leans against the land, 
And, sedulous to stop the coming tide, 
Lifts the tall rampire's artificial pride. 
Onward, methinks, and diligently slow, 
The firm connected bulwark seems to grow ; 
Spreads its long arms amid the watery roar. 
Scoops out an empire, and usurps the shore. 
While the pent ocean, rising o'er the pile 
Sees an amphibious world before him smile : 
The slow canal, the yellow blossom'd vale, 
The willow-tufted bank, the gliding sail. 
The crowded mart, the cultivated plain, 
A new creation rescued from his reign." 

He remained about a year at Leyden, attending the lectures of 
Gaubius on chemistry and Albinus on anatomy ; though his 
studies are said to have been miscellaneous, and directed to litera- 
ture rather than science. The thirty-three pounds with which he 
had set out on his travels were soon consumed, and he was put 
to many a shift to meet his expenses until his precarious remit- 
tances should arrive. He had a' good friend on these occasions 
in a fellow-student and countryman, named Ellis, who afterwards 



48 ' OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

rose to eminence as a physician. He used frequently to loan 
small sums to Goldsmith, which were always scrupulously paid. 
Ellis discovered the innate merits of the poor awkward student, 
and used to declare in after-life that " it was a common remark 
in Leyden, that in all the peculiarities of Goldsmith, an elevation 
of mind was to be noted ; a philosophical tone and manner ;- the 
feelings of a gentleman, and the language and information of a 
scholar." 

Sometimes, in his emergencies. Goldsmith undertook to teach 
the English language. It is true he was ignorant of the Dutch, 
but he had a smattering of the French, picked up among the Irish 
priests at Ballymahon. He depicts his whimsical embarrassment 
in this respect, in his account in the Vicar of Wakefield of the 
" philosophical vagabond," who went to Holland to teach the natives 
English, without knowing a word of their own language. Some- 
times, when sorely pinched, and sometimes, perhaps, when flush, 
he resorted to the gambling-tables, which in those days abounded 
in Holland. His good friend Ellis repeatedly warned him against 
this unfortunate propensity, but in vain. It brought its own 
cure, or rather its own punishment, by stripping him of every 
shilling. 

Ellis once more stepped in to his relief with a true Irishman's 
generosity, but with more considerateness than generally charac- 
terizes an Irishman, for. he only granted pecuniary aid on condi- 
tion of his quitting the sphere of danger. Goldsmith gladly 
consented to leave Holland, being anxious to visit other parts. 
He intended to proceed to Paris and pursue his studies there, and 
was furnished by his friend with money for the journey. Un- 
luckily, he rambled into the garden of a florist just before quit- 
ting Leyden. The tulip-mania was still prevalent in Holland, 
and some species of that splendid flower brought immense prices. 
In wandering through the garden, Goldsmith recollected that his 
uncle Contarine was a tulip-fancier. The thought suddenly struck 
him that here was an opportunity of testifying, in a delicate man- 
ner, his sense of that generous uncle's past kindnesses. In an 



THE PROVIDENT FLUTE. 49 

instant his hand was in his pocket ; a number of choice and costly 
tulip-roots were purchased and packed up for Mr. Contarine ; and 
it was not until he had paid for them that he bethought himself 
that he had spent all the money borrowed for his travelling ex- 
penses. Too proud, however, to give up his journey, and too 
shamefaced to make another appeal to his friend's liberality, he 
determined to travel on foot, and depend upon chance and good 
luck for the means of getting forward ; and it is said that he 
actually set off on a tour of the Continent, in February, 1755, 
with but one spare shirt, a flute, and a single guinea. 

"Blessed," says one of his biographers, "with a good constitu- 
tion, an adventurous spirit, and with that thoughtless, or, per- 
haps, happy disposition which takes no care for to-morrow, he 
continued his travels for a long time .in spite of innumerable 
privations." In his amusing narrative of the adventures of a 
" Philosophic Vagabond " in the Vicar of Wakefield, we find 
shadowed out the expedients he pursued. " I had some knowl- 
edge of music, with a tolerable voice ; I now turned what was 
once my amusement into a present means of subsistence. I passed 
among the harmless peasants of Flanders, and among such of the 
French as were poor enough to be very merry, for I ever found 
them sprightly in proportion to their wants. Whenever I ap- 
proached a peasant's house towards nightfall, I played one of my 
merriest tunes, and that procured me not only a lodging, but sub- 
sistence for the next day ; but in truth I must own, whenever I 
attempted to entertain persons of a higher rank, they always 
thought my performance odious, and never made me any return 
for my endeavors to please them." 

At Paris he attended the chemical lectures of Rouelle, then in 
great vogue, where he says he witnessed as bright a circle of 
beauty as graced the court of Versailles. His love of theatricals 
also led him to attend the performances of the celebrated actress 
Mademoiselle Clairon, with which he was greatly delighted. He 
seems to have looked upon the state of society with the eye of a 
philosopher, but to have read the signs of the times with the 



50 OLIVER goldsmith: 

prophetic eye of a poet. In his rambles about the environs of 
Paris he was struck with the immense quantities of game running 
about almost in a tame state; and saw in those costly and rigid 
preserves for the amusement and luxury of the privileged few, 
a sure "badge of the slavery of the people." This slavery he pre- 
dicted was drawing towards a close. " When I consider that 
these parliaments, the members of which are all created by the 
court, and the presidents of which can only act by immediate di- 
rection, presume even to mention privileges and freedom, who till 
of late received directions from the throne with implicit humility ; 
when this is considered, I cannot help fancying that the genius of 
Freedom has entered that kingdom in disguise. If they have but 
three weak monarchs more successively on the throne, the mask 
will be laid aside, and the country will certainly once more be 
free." Events have testified to the sage forecast of the poet. 

During a brief sojourn in Paris, he appears to have gained ac- 
cess to valuable society, and to have had the honor and pleasure 
of making the acquaintance of Voltaire ; of whom, in after-years, 
he wrote a memoir. "As a companion," says he, "no man ever 
exceeded him when he pleased to lead the conversation ; which, 
however, was not always the case. In company which he either 
disliked or despised, few could be more reserved than he; but 
when he was warmed in discourse, and got over a hesitating man- 
ner, which sometimes he was subject to, it was rapture to hear 
him. His meagre visage seemed insensibly to gather beauty : 
every muscle in it had meaning, and his eye beamed with unusual 
brightness. The person who writes this memoir," continues he, 
" remembers to have seen him in a select company of wits of both 
'sexes at Paris, when the subject happened to turn upon English 
taste and learning. Fontenelle, (then nearly a hundred years 
old,) who was of the party, and who being unacquainted with the 
language or authors of the country he undertook to condemn, 
with a spirit truly vulgar began to revile both. Diderot, who 
liked the English, and knew something of their literary pretensions, 
attempted to vindicate their poetry and learning, but with unequal 



SKETCH OF VOLTAIRE. 51 

abilities. The company quickly perceived that Fontenelle was 
superior in the dispute, and were surprised at the silence which 
Voltaire had preserved all the former part of the night, particu- 
larly as the conversation happened to turn upon one of his fa- 
vorite topics. Fontenelle continued his triumph until about 
twelve o'clock, when Voltaire appeared at last roused from his 
reverie. His whole frame seemed animated. He began his de- 
fence with the utmost defiance mixed with spirit, and now and 
then let fall the finest strokes of raillery upon his antagonist ; and 
his harangue lasted till three in the morning. I must confess, 
that, whether from national partiality, or from the elegant sensi- 
bility of his manner, I never was so charmed, nor did I ever re- 
member so absolute a victory as he gained in this dispute." 
Goldsmith's ramblings took him into Germany and Switzerland, 
from which last-mentioned country he sent to his brother in Ire- 
land the first brief sketch, afterwards amplified into his poem of 
the Traveller. 

At Geneva he became travelling tutor to a mongrel young gen- 
tleman, son of a London pawnbroker, who had been suddenly ele- 
vated into fortune and absurdity by the death of an uncle. The 
youth, before setting up for a gentleman, had been an attorney's 
apprentice, and was an arrant pettifogger in money-matters. 
Never were two beings more illy assorted than he and Goldsmith. 
We may form an idea of the tutor and the pupil from the follow- 
ing extract from the narrative of the " Philosophic Vagabond." 

"I was to be the young gentleman's governor, but with a proviso 
that he could always be permitted to govern himself. My pupil, in 
fact, understood the art of guiding in money-concerns much "better 
than I. He was heir to a fortune of about two hundred thousand 
pounds, left him by an uncle in the West Indies ; and his guardians, 
to qualify him for the management of it, had bound him apprentice to 
an attorney. Thus avarice was his prevailing passion ; all his ques- 
tions on the road were, how money might be saved, — which was the 
least expensive course of travel, — whether anything could be bought 
that would turn to account when disposed of again in London ? Such 
curiosities on the way as could be seen for nothing he was ready 



52 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

enough to look at ; but if the sight of them was to be paid for, he 
usually asserted that he had been told that they were not worth see- 
ing. He never paid a bill that he would not observe how amazingly 
expensive travelling was, and all this though not yet twenty-one." 

In this sketch Goldsmith undoubtedly shadows forth his an- 
noyances as travelling tutor to this concrete young gentleman, 
compounded of the pawnbroker, the pettifogger, and the West 
Indian heir, with an overlaying of the city miser. They had con- 
tinual difficulties on all points of expense until they reached Mar- 
seilles, where both were glad to separate. 

Once more on foot, but freed from the irksome duties of " bear- 
leader," and with some of his pay, as tutor, in his pocket, Gold- 
smith continued his half vagrant peregrinations through part of 
France and Piedmont and some of the Italian States. He had 
acquired, as has been shown, a habit of shifting along and living 
by expedients, and a new one presented itself in Italy. " My skill 
in music," says he, in. the "Philosophic Vagabond," "could avail 
me nothing in a country where every peasant was a better musi- 
cian than I ; but by this time I had acquired another talent, 
which answered my purpose as well, and this was a skill in dispu- 
tation. In all the foreign universities and convents there are, 
upon certain days, philosophical theses maintained against every 
adventitious disputant, for which, if the champion opposes with 
any dexterity, he can claim a gratuity in money, a dinner, and a 
bed for one night." Though a poor wandering scholar, his recep- 
tion in these learned piles was as free from humiliation as in the 
cottages of the peasantry. " With the members of these estab- 
lishments," said he, "I could converse on topics of literature, and 
then I ahvays forgot the meanness of my circumstances.^'' 

At Padua, where he remained some months, he is said to have 
taken his medical degree. It is probable he was brought to a 
pause in this city by the illness of his uncle Contarine ; who had 
hitherto assisted him in his wanderings by occasional, though, of 
course, slender remittances. Deprived of this source of supplies, 
he wrote to his friends in Ireland, and especially to his brother-in- 



A WANDERING SCHOLAR. 53 

law, Hodson, describing his destitute situation. His letters brought 
him neither money nor reply. It appears, from subsequent cor- 
respondence, that his brother-in-law actually exerted himself to 
raise a subscription for his assistance among his relatives, friends, 
and acquaintance, but without success. Their faith and hope in 
him were most probably at an end ; as yet he had disappointed 
them at every point, he had given none of the anticipated proofs 
of talent, and they were too poor to support what they may have 
considered the wandering propensities of a heedless spendthrift. 

Thus left to his own precarious resources. Goldsmith gave up all 
further wandering in Italy, without visiting the south, though 
Rome and Naples must have held out powerful attractions to one 
of his poetical cast. Once more resuming his pilgrim staff, he 
turned his face toward England, " walking along from city to city, 
examining mankind more nearly, and seeing both sides of the 
picture." In traversing France his flute — his magic flute! — 
was once more in requisition, as we may conclude by the follow- 
ing passage in his Traveller : — 

" Gay, sprightly land of mirth and social ease, 
Pleased with thyself, whom all the world can please, 
How often have I lead thy sportive choir 
With tuneless pipe beside the murmuring Loire ! 
Where shading elms along the margin grew, 
And freshened from the wave the zephyr flew ; 
And hSply though my harsh note fait' ring still, 
But mocked all tune, and marr'd the dancer's skill ; 
Yet would the village praise my wondrous power, 
And dance forgetful of the noontide hour. 
Alike all ages : Dames of ancient days 
Have led their children through the mirthful maze, 
And the gay grandsire, skill'd in gestic lore, 
Has frisk' d beneath the burden of three-score." 



54 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 



CHAPTER VL 

After two years spent in roving about the Continent, " pursu- 
ing novelty," as he said, " and losing content," Goldsmith landed 
at Dover early in 1756. He appears to have had no definite 
plan of action. The death of his uncle Contarine, and the 
neglect of his relatives and friends to reply to his letters, seem to 
have produced in him a temporary feeling of loneliness and destitu- 
tion, and his only thought was to get to London, and throw him- 
self upon the world. But how was he to get there ? His purse 
was empty. England was to him as completely a foreign land as 
any part of the Continent, and where on earth is a penniless 
stranger more destitute ? His flute and his philosophy were no 
longer of any avail ; the English boors cared nothing for music ; 
there were no convents ; and as to the learned and the clergy, not 
one of them would give a vagrant scholar a supper and night's 
lodging for the best thesis that ever was argued. " You may 
easily imagine," says he, in a subsequent letter to his brother-in- 
law, " what difficulties I had to encounter, left as I was without 
friends, recommendations, money, or impudence, and that in a 
country where being born an Irishman was sufficient to keep me 
unemployed. Many, in such circumstances, would have had re- 
course to the friar's cord or the suicide's halter. But, with all my 
follies, I had principle to resist the one, and resolution to combat 
the other." 

He applied at one place, we are told, for employment in the shop 
of a country apothecary ; but all his medical science gathered in 
foreign universities could not gain him the management of a pestle 
and mortar. He even resorted, it is said, to the stage as a tem- 
porary expedient, and figured in low comedy at a country town in 
Kent. This accords with his last shift of the Philosophic Vaga- 
bond, and with the knowledge of country theatricals displayed in 
his Adventures of a Strolling Plai/er, or may be a story sug- 
gested by them. All this part of his career, however, in which he 



SHIFTS FOR MONEY. 55 

must have trod the lowest paths of humility, are only to be con- 
jectured from vague traditions, or scraps of autobiography gleaned 
from his miscellaneous writings. 

At length we find him launched on the great metropolis, or 
rather drifting about its streets, at night, in the gloomy month of 
February, with but a few half-pence in his pocket. The Deserts 
of Arabia are not more dreary and inhospitable than the streets of 
London at such a time, and to a stranger in such a plight. Do we 
want a picture as an illustration? We have it in his own words, 
and furnished, doubtless, from his own experience. 

" The clock has just struck two ; what a gloom hangs all around ! 
no sound is heard but of the chiming clock, or the distant watch -dog. 
How few appear in those streets, which but some few hours ago were 
crowded ! But who are those who make the streets their couch, and 
find a short repose from wretchedness at the doors of the opulent ? 
They are strangers, wanderers, and orphans, whose circumstances are 
too humble to expect redress, and whose distresses are too great even 
for pity. Some are without the covering even of rags, and others 
emaciated with disease ; the world has disclaimed them ; society turns 
its back upon their distress, and has given them up to nakedness and 
hunger. These poor shivering females have once seen happier days, 
and been flattered into beauty. They are now turned out to meet the 
severity of winter. Perhaps now, lying at the doors of their betrayers, 
they sue to wretches whose hearts are insensible, or debauchees who 
may curse, but will not relieve them. 

" Why, why was I born a man, and yet see the sufferings of 
wretches I cannot relieve ! Poor houseless creatures ! The world will 
give you reproaches, but will. not give you relief." 

Poor houseless Goldsmith ! we may here ejaculate — to what 
shifts he must have been driven to find shelter and sustenance for 
himself in this his first venture into London ! Many years after- 
v/ards, in the days of his social elevation, he startled a polite circle 
at Sir Joshua Reynolds's by humorously dating an anecdote about 
the time he "lived among the beggars of Axe Lane." Such may 
have been the desolate quarters with which he was fain to content 
himself when thus adrift upon the town, with but a few half-pence 
in his pocket. 



56 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

The first authentic trace we have of him in this new part of his 
career, is filling the situation of an usher to a school, and even this 
employ he obtained with some difficulty, after a reference for a 
character to his friends in the. University of Dublin. - In the Vicar 
of Wakefield he makes George Primrose undergo a whimsical cate- 
chism concerning the requisites for an usher. "Have you been 
bred apprentice to the business?" "No." "Then you won't do 
for a school. Can you dress the boys' hair?" "No." "Then 
you won't do for a school. Can you lie three in a bed?" "No." 
" Then you will never do for a school. Have you a good stom- 
ach ? " " Yes." " Then you will by no means do for a school. I 
have been an usher in a boarding-school myself, and may I die of 
an anodyne necklace, but I had rather be under-turnkey in New- 
gate. I was up early and late : I was browbeat by the master, 
hated for my ugly face by the mistress, worried by the boys." 

Groldsmith remained but a short time in this situation, and to 
the mortifications experienced there we doubtless owe the pictur- 
ings given in his writings of the hardships of an usher's life. 
"He is generally," says he, "the laughing-stock of the schooL 
Every trick is played upon him ; the oddity of his manner, his 
dress, or his language, is a fund of eternal ridicule; the master 
himself now and then cannot avoid joining in the laugh ; and the 
poor wretch, eternally resenting this ill-usage, lives in a state of 
war with all the family. . . . He is obliged, perhaps, to sleep in 
the same bed with the French teacher, who disturbs him for an 
hour every night in papering and filleting his hair, and stinks worse 
than a carrion with his rancid pomatums, when he lays his head 
beside him on the bolster." 

His next shift was as assistant in the laboratory of a chemist 
near Fish-Street Hill. After remaining here a few months, he 
heard that Dr. Sleigh, who had been his friend and fellow-student 
at Edinburgh, was in London. Eager to meet with a friendly face 
in this land of strangers, he immediately called on him ; " but 
though it was Sunday, and it is to be supposed I was in my best 
clothes. Sleigh scarcely knew me — such is the tax the unfortunate 



A DOCTOB IN THE SUBUEB. 51 

pay to poverty. However, when he did recollect me, I found his 
heart as warm as ever, and he shared his purse and friendship with 
me during his continuance in London." 

Through the advice and assistance of Dr. Sleigh, he now com- 
menced the practice of medicine, but in a small way, in Bankside, 
South wark, and chiefly among the poor ; for he wanted the figure, 
address, polish, and management, to succeed among the rich. His 
old schoolmate and college companion, Beatty, who used to aid 
him with his purse at the university, met him about this time, 
decked out in the tarnished finery of a second-hand suit of green 
and gold, with a shirt and neckcloth of a fortnight's wear. 

Poor Goldsmith endeavored to assume a prosperous air in the 
eyes of his early associate. " He was practising physic," he said, 
" and doing very well I " At this moment poverty was pinching 
him to the bone in spite of his practice and his dirty finery. His 
fees were necessarily small and ill paid, and he was fain to seek 
some precarious assistance from his pen. Here his quondam fel- 
low-student. Dr. Sleigh, was again of service, introducing him to 
some of the booksellers, who gave him occasional, though starve- 
ling, employment. According to tradition, however, his most efii- 
cient patron just now was a journeyman printer, one of his poor 
patients of Bankside, who had formed a good opinion of his tal- 
ents, and perceived his poverty and his literary shifts. The 
printer was in the employ of Mr. Samuel Richardson, the author 
of Pamela, Clarissa, and Sir Charles Grandison ; who combined 
the novelist and the publisher, and was in flourishing circum- 
stances. Through the journeyman's intervention Goldsmith is 
said to have become acquainted with Richardson, who employed 
him as reader and corrector of the press, at his printing establish- 
ment in Salisbury Court, — an occupation which he alternated 
with his medical duties. 

Being admitted occasionally to Richardson's parlor, he began to 
form literary acquaintances, among whom the most important 
was Dr. Young, the author of Night Thoughts, a poem in the 
height of fashion. It is not probable, however, that much famili- 



58 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

arity took place at the time between the literary lion of the day and 
the poor ^sculapius of Bankside, the humble corrector of the press. 
Still the communion with literary men had its effect to set his 
imagination teeming. Dr. Farr, one of his Edinburgh fellow- 
students, who was at London about this time, attending the hos- 
pitals and lectures, gives us an amusing account of Goldsmith in 
his literary character. 

" Early in January he called upon me one morning before I was 
up, and, on my entering the room, I recognized my old acquaint-, 
ance, dressed in a rusty, full-trimmed black suit, with his pockets 
full of papers, which instantly reminded me of the poet in Gar- 
rick's farce of ' Lethe.' After we had finished our breakfast, he 
drew from his pocket part of a tragedy, which he said he had 
brought for my correction. In vain I pleaded inability, when he 
began to read; and every part on which I expressed a doubt as to 
the propriety was immediately blotted out. I then most earnestly 
pressed him not to trust to my judgment, but to take the opinion 
of persons better qualified to decide on dramatic compositions. 
He now told me he had submitted his production, so far as he had 
written, to Mr. Richardson, the author of Clarissa, on which I 
peremptorily declined offering another criticism on the perform- 
ance." 

From the graphic description given of him by Dr. Farr, it will 
be perceived that the tarnished finery of green and gold had been 
succeeded by a professional suit of black, to which, we are told, 
were added the wig and cane indispensable to medical doctors in 
those days. The coat was a second-hand one, of rusty velvet, with 
a patch on the left breast, which he adroitly coAT'ered with his 
three-cornered hat during his medical visits; and we have an 
amusing anecdote of his contest of courtesy with a patient who 
persisted in endeavoring to relieve him from the hat, which only 
made him press it more devoutly to his heart. 

Nothing further has ever been heard of the tragedy mentioned 
by Dr. Farr ; it was probably never completed. The same gentle- 
man speaks of a strange Quixotic scheme which Goldsmith had in 



LIFE OF A PEDAGOGUE. 59 

contemplation at the time, " of going to decipher the inscriptions 
on the written mountains, though he was altogether ignorant of 
Arabic, or the language in which they might be supposed to be 
written. The salary of three hundred pounds," adds Dr. Farr, 
" which had been left for the purpose, was the temptation." This 
was probably one of the many dreamy projects with which his 
fervid brain was apt to teem. On such subjects he was prone to 
talk vaguely and magnificently, but inconsiderately, from a 
kindled imagination rather than a well-instructed judgment. 
He had always a great notion of expeditions to the East, and won- 
ders to be seen and effected in the Oriental countries. 



CHAPTER VII. 

Among the most cordial of G-oldsmith's intimates in London 
during this time of precarious struggle, were certain of his former 
fellow-students in Edinburgh. One of these was the son 
of a Dr. Milner, a dissenting minister, who kept a classical 
school of eminence at Peckham, in Surrey. Young Milner had a 
favorable opinion of Goldsmith's abilities and attainments, and 
cherished for him that goodwill which his genial nature seems ever 
to have inspired among his school and college associates. His 
father falling ill, the young man negotiated with Goldsmith 
to take temporary charge of the school. The latter readily 
consented ; for he was discouraged by the slow growth of 
medical reputation and practice, and as yet had no confidence 
in the coy smiles of the Muse. Laying by his wig and cane, 
therefore, and once more wielding the ferule, he resumed the 
character of the pedagogue, and for some time reigned as 
vicegerent over the academy at Peckham. He appears to 
have been well treated by both Dr. Milner and his wife ; and 
became a favorite with the scholars from his easy, indulgent 
good-nature. He mingled in their sports ; told them droll 
stories ; played on the flute for their amusement, and spent 



60 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

his money in treating them to sweetmeats and other school- 
boy dainties. His famiharity was sometimes carried too far; 
he indulged in boyish pranks and practical jokes, and drew 
upon himself retorts in kind, which, however, he bore with 
great good-humor. Once, indeed, he was touched to the quick by 
a piece of schoolboy pertness. After playing on the flute, he 
spoke with enthusiasm of music, as delightful in itself, and as 
a valuable accomplishment for a gentleman, whereupon a young- 
ster, with a glance at his ungainly person, wished to know if 
he considered himself a gentleman. Poor Goldsmith, feelingly 
alive to the awkwardness of his appearance and the humility of 
his situation, winced at this unthinking sneer, which long rankled 
in his mind. 

As usual, while in Dr. Milner's employ, his benevolent feel- 
ings were a heavy tax upon his purse, for he never could re- 
sist a tale of distress, and was apt to be fleeced by every sturdy- 
beggar; so that, between his charity and his munificence, he 
was generally in advance of his slender salary. " You had better, 
Mr. Goldsmith, let me take care of your money," said Mrs. 
Milner one day, "as I do for some of the young gentlemen." 
"In truth, madam, there is equal need!" was the good-humored 
reply. 

Dr. Milner was a man of some literary pretensions, and 
wrote occasionally for the Monthly Revieiv, of which a book- 
seller, by the name of Griffiths, was proprietor. This work was 
an advocate for Whig principles, and had been in prosperous 
existence for nearly eight years. Of late, however, periodicals 
had multiplied exceedingly, and a formidable Tory rival had 
started up in the Critical Revieiv, published by Archibald Ham- 
ilton, a bookseller, and aided by the powerful and popular pen 
of Dr. Smollett. Griffiths was obliged to recruit his forces. 
While so doing he met Goldsmith, a humble occupant of a 
seat at Dr. Milner's table, and was struck with remarks on 
men and books, which fell from him in the course of conversa- 
tion. He took occasion to sound him privately as to his 



THE GRIFFITHS. ' 61 

inclination and capacity as a reviewer, and was furnished by 
him with specimens of his literary and critical talents. They 
proved satisfactory. The consequence was that Goldsmith once 
more changed his mode of life and in April, 1757, became a 
contributor to the Monthly Review, at a small fixed salary, with 
board and lodging ; and accordingly took up his abode with Mr. 
Griffiths, at the sign of the Dunciad, Paternoster Row. As 
usual we trace this phase of his fortunes in his semi-fictitious 
writings; his sudden transmutation of the pedagogue into the 
author being humorously set forth in the case of " George 
Primrose " in the Vicar of Wakefield. " Come, " says George's 
adviser, " I see you are a lad of spirit and some learning; what do 
you think of commencing author like me? You have read in 
books, no doubt, of men of genius starving at the trade : at 
present I'll show you forty very dull fellows about town that live by 
it in opulence. All honest, jog-trot men, who go on smoothly and 
dully, and write history and politics, and are praised : men, 
sir, who, had they been bred cobblers, would all their lives 
only have mended shoes, but never made them." "Finding" 
(says George) "that there was no great degree of gentil- 
ity affixed to the character of an usher, I resolved to ac- 
cept his proposal ; and, having the highest respect for 
literature, hailed the antiqua mater of Grub Street with 
reverence. I thought it my glory to pursue a track which 
Dry den and Otway trod before me." Alas, Dryden struggled 
with indigence all his days ; and Otway, it is said, fell a 
victim to famine in his thirty-fifth year, being strangled by a 
roll of bread, which he devoured with the voracity of a starving 
man. 

In Goldsmith's experience the track soon proved a thorny 
one. Griffiths was a hard business-man, of shrewd, worldly 
good sense, but little refinement or cultivation. He meddled 
or rather muddled with literature, too, in a business-way, 
altering and modifying occasionally the writings of his con- 
tributors, and in this he was aided by his wife, who, according 



62 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

to Smollett, was " an antiquated female critic and a dabbler in 
the Revieiv" Such was the literary vassalage to which Gold- 
smith had unwarily subjected himself. A diurnal drudgery 
was imposed on him, irksome to his indolent habits, and attended 
by circumstances humiliating to his pride. He had to write daily 
from nine o'clock until two, and often throughout the day ; 
whether in the vein or not and on subjects dictated by his 
task-master, however foreign to his taste ; in a word, he was 
treated as a mere literary hack. But this was not the worst ; 
it was the critical supervision of G-riffiths and his wife, which 
grieved him; the "illiterate, bookselling Griffiths," as Smollett 
called them, "who presumed to revise, alter, and amend the 
articles contributed to their Revietv. Thank Heaven," crowed 
Smollett, "the Critical Revieiv is not written under the re- 
straint of a bookseller and his wife. Its principal writers are 
independent of each other, unconnected with booksellers, and 
unawed by old women ! " 

This literary vassalage, however, did not last long. The book- 
seller became more and more exacting. He accused his hack 
writer of idleness ; of abandoning his writing-desk and literary 
workshop at an early hour of the day; and of assuming a tone 
and manner above his situation. Goldsmith, in return, charged 
him with impertinence ; his wife, with meanness and parsimony 
in her household treatment of him, and both of literary meddling 
and marring. The engagement was broken off at the end of five 
months, by mutual consent, and without any violent rupture, as 
it will be found they afterwards had occasional dealings with each 
other. 

Though Goldsmith was now nearly thirty years of age, he had 
produced nothing to give him a decided reputation. He was as 
yet a mere writer for bread. The articles he had contributed to 
the Review were anonymous, and were never avowed by him. 
They have since been, for the most part, ascertained; and though 
thrown off hastily, often treating on subjects of temporary inter- 
est, and marred by the Griffith interpolations, they are still char- 



NEWBEEV, OF PICTURE-BOOK MEMORY. 63 

acterized by his sound, easy good sense, and the genial graces of 
his style. Johnson observed that Goldsmith's genius flowered 
late; he should have said it flowered early, but was late in bring- 
ing its fruit to maturity. 



CHAPTER yill. 

Being now known in the publishing world, Goldsmith began to 
find casual employment in various quarters ; among others he 
wrote occasionally for the Literary Magazine, a production set on 
foot by Mr, John Newbery, bookseller, St. Paul's Churchyard, re- 
nowned in nursery literature throughout the latter half of the last 
century for his picture-books for children. Newbery was a 
worthy, intelligent, kind-hearted man, and a seasonable, though 
cautious friend to authors, relieving them with small loans when 
in pecuniary difficulties, though always taking care to be well re- 
paid by the labor of their pens. Goldsmith introduces him in a 
humorous yet friendly manner in his novel of the Vicar of Wake- 
Jield. " This person was no other than the philanthropic book- 
seller in St. Paul's Churchyard, who has written so many little 
books for children ; he called himself their friend ; but he was the 
friend of all mankind. He was no sooner alighted but he was in 
haste to be gone ; for hie was ever on business of importance, and 
was at that time actually compiling materials for the history of 
one' Mr. Thomas Trip. I immediately recollected this good- 
natured man's red-pimpled face." 

Besides his literary job-work. Goldsmith also resumed his medi- 
cal practice, but with very trifling success. The scantiness of his 
purse still obliged him to live in obscure lodgings somewhere in 
the vicinity of Salisbury Square, Fleet Street ; but his extended 
acquaintance and rising importance caused him to consult appear- 
ances. He adopted an expedient, then very common, and still 
practised in London among those who have to tread the narrow 
path between pride and poverty : while he burrowed in lodgings 



64 OLIVER GOLDSMITH, 

suited to his means, he "hailed," as it is termed, from the Temple 
Exchange Coffee-House near Temple Bar. Here he received his 
medical calls; hence he dated his letters; and here he passed 
much of his leisure hours, conversing with the frequenters of the 
place. "Thirty pounds a year," said a poor Irish painter, who 
understood the art of shifting, " is enough to enable a man to live 
in London without being contemptible. Ten pounds will find him 
in clothes and linen ; he can live in a garret on eighteen pence a 
week; hail from a coffee-house, where, by occasionally spending 
threepence, he may pass some hours each day in good company ; 
hfe may breakfast on bread and milk for a penny ; dine for sixpence ; 
do without supper ; and on clean-shirt-day he may go abroad and 
pay visits." 

Goldsmith seems to have taken a leaf from this poor devil's 
manual in respect to the coffee-house at least. Indeed, coffee- 
houses in those days were the resorts of wits and literati ; where 
the topics of the day were gossiped over, and the affairs of litera- 
ture and the drama discussed and criticised. In this way he 
enlarged the circle of his intimacy, which now embraced several 
names of notoriety. 

Do we want a picture of Goldsmith's experience in this part of 
his career 1 we have it in his observations on the life of an author 
in the Inquiry into the State of Polite Learning, published some 
years afterwards. 

"The author, unpatronized by the great, has naturally recourse to 
the bookseller. There cannot, perhaps, be imagined a combination 
more prejudicial to taste than this. It is the interest of tiie one to 
allow as little for writing, and for the other to write as much as pos- 
sible ; accordingly, tedious compilations and periodical magazines are 
the result of their joint endeavors. In these circumstances the author 
bids adieu to fame ; writes for bread ; and for that only imagination 
is seldom called in. He sits down to address the venal Muse with the 
most phlegmatic apathy ; and, as we are told of the Russian, courts 
his mistress by falling asleep in her lap." 

Again. " Those who are unacquainted with the world are apt to 
fancy the man of wit as leading a very agreeable life. They con- 



MISERIES OF AUTHORSHIP. 65 

elude, perhaps, that he is attended with silent admiration, and 
dictates to the rest of mankind with all the eloquence of conscious 
superiority. Very different is his present situation. He is called an 
author, and all know that an author is a thing only to be laughed at. 
His person, not his jest, becomes the mirth of the company. At his 
approach the most fat, unthinking face brightens into malicious mean- 
ing. Even aldermen laugh, and avenge on him the ridicule which 
was lavished on their forefathers. . . , The poet's poverty is a 
standing topic of contempt. His writing for bread is an unpardonable 
offence. Perhaps of all mankind, an author in these times is used 
most hardly. We keep him poor, and yet revile his poverty. We 
reproach him for living by his wit, and yet allow him no other means 
to live. His taking refuge in garrets and cellars has of late been 
violently objected to him, and that by men who, I have hope, are 
more apt to pity than insult his distress. Is poverty a careless fault ? 
No doubt he knows how to prefer a bottle of champagne to the nectar 
of the neighboring ale-house, or a venison pasty to a plate of potatoes. 
Want of delicacy is not in him, but in those who deny him the 
opportunity of making an elegant choice. Wit certainly is the 
property of those who have it, nor should we be displeased if it is 
the only property a man sometimes has. We must not underrate him 
who uses it for subsistence, and flees from the ingratitude of the age, 
even to a bookseller for redress." . . . 

" If the author be necessary among us, let us treat him with proper 
consideration as a child of the public, not as a rent-charge on the 
community. And indeed a child of the public he is in all respects ; 
for while so well able to direct others, how incapable is he frequently 
found of guiding himself. His simplicity exposes him to all the 
insidious approaches of cunning : his sensibility, to the slightest in- 
vasions of contempt. Though possessed of fortitude to stand 
unmoved the expected bursts of an earthquake, yet of feelings so 
exquisitely poignant, as to agonize under the slightest disappointment. 
Broken rest, tasteless meals, and causeless anxieties shorten life and 
render it unfit for active employments ; prolonged vigils and intense 
applications still farther contract his span, and make his time glide 
insensibly away." 

While poor Goldsmith was thus struggling with the difficulties 
and discouragements which in those days beset the path of an 
author, his friends in Ireland received accounts of his literary 
success and of the distinguished acquaintances he was making. 



Q6 OLIVER GOLDSMITH, 

This was enough to put the wise heads at Lissoy and Ballymahon 
in a ferment of conjectures. With the exaggerated notions of pro- 
vincial relatives concerning the family great man in the metropolis, 
some of Goldsmith's poor kindred pictured him to themselves 
seated in high places, clothed in purple and fine linen, and hand 
and glove with the givers of gifts and dispensers of patronage. 
Accordingly, he was one day surprised at the sudden apparition, 
in his miserable lodging, of his younger brother Charles, a raw 
youth of twenty-one, endowed with a double share of the family 
heedlessness, and who expected to be forthwith helped into some 
snug by-path to fortune by one or other of Oliver's great friends. 
Charles was sadly disconcerted on learning that, so far from being 
able to provide for others, his brother could scarcely take care of 
himself. He looked round with a rueful eye on the poet's quar- 
ters, and could not help expressing his surprise and disappoint- 
ment at finding him no better off. " All in good time, my dear 
boy," replied poor Goldsmith, with infinite good-humor; "I shall 
be richer by-and-by. Addison, let me tell you, wrote his poem of 
the ' Campaign ' in a garret in the Hay market, three stories high, 
and you see I am not come to that yet, for I have only got to the 
second story." 

Charles Goldsmith did not remain long to embarrass his brother 
in London. With the same roving disposition and inconsiderate 
temper of Oliver, he suddenly departed in an humble capacity to 
seek his fortune in the West Indies, and nothing was heard of him 
for above thirty years, when, after having been given up as dead 
by his friends, he made his reappearance in England, 

Shortly after his departure, Goldsmith wrote a letter to his 
brother-in-law, Daniel Hodson, Esq., of which the following is an 
extract ; it was partly intended, no doubt, to dissipate any further 
illusions concerning his fortunes which might float on the magnifi- 
cent imagination of his friends in Ballymahon. 

" I suppose you desire to know my present situation. As there is 
nothing in it at which I should blush or which mankind could censure, 
I see no reason for making it a secret. In short, by a very little 



LETTER TO HOBSON. 67 

practice as a physician, and a very little reputation as a poet, I make 
a shift to live. Nothing is more apt to introduce us to the gates of the 
Muses than poverty ; but it were well if they only left us at the door. 
The mischief is, they sometimes choose to give us their company to 
the entertainment ; and want, instead of being gentleman-usher, often 
turns master of the ceremonies. 

" Thus, upon learning I write, no doubt you imagine I starve ; and 
the name of an author naturally reminds you of a garret. In this par- 
ticular I do not think proper to undeceive my friends. But, whether 
I eat or starve, live in a first floor or four pairs of stairs high, I still 
remember them with ardor; nay, my very country comes in for a 
share of my affection. Unaccountable fondness for country, this 
maladie du pais, as the French call it ! Unaccountable that he should 
still have an affection for a place, who never, when in it, received 
above common civility ; who never brought anything out of it except 
his brogue and his blunders. Surely my affection is equally ridiculous 
with the Scotchman's, who refused to be cured of the itch because it 
made him unco' thoughtful of his wife and bonny Inverary. 

" But, now, to be serious : let me ask myself what gives me a wish 
to see Ireland again. The country is a fine one, perhaps ? No. 
There are good company in Ireland ? No. The conversation there is 
generally made up of a smutty toast or a bawdy song ; the vivacity 
supported by some humble cousin, who had just folly enough to earn 
his dinner. Then, perhaps, there's more wit and learning among the 
Irish ? Oh, Lord, no ! There has been more money spent in the en- 
couragement of the Padareen mare there one season, than given in 
rewards to learned men since the time of Usher. All their productions 
in learning amount to perhaps a translation, or a few tracts in divin- 
ity ; and all their productions in wit to just nothing at all. Why the 
plague, then, so fond of Ireland ? Then, all at once, because you, 
my dear friend, and a few more who are exceptions to the general pic- 
ture, have a residence there. This it is that gives me all the pangs I 
feel in separation. I confess I carry this spirit sometimes to the sour- 
ing the pleasures I at present possess. If I go to the opera, where Sig- 
nora Columba pours out all the mazes of melody, I sit and sigh for 
Lissoy fireside, and Johnny Armstrong's ' Last Good-night ' from 
Peggy Golden. If I climb Hampstead Hill, than where nature never 
exhibited a more magnificent prospect, I confess it fine ; but then I 
had rather be placed on the little mount before Lissoy gate, and there 
take in, to me, the most pleasing horizon in nature. 

" Before Charles came hither, my thoughts sometimes found refuge 



68 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

from severer studies among my friends in Ireland. I fancied strange 
revolutions at home ; but I find it was the rapidity of my own motion that 
gave an imaginary one to objects really at rest. No alterations tliere. 
Some friends, he tells me, are still lean, but very rich ; others very 
fat, but still very poor. Nay, all the news I hear of you is, that you 
sally out in visits among the neighbors, and sometimes make a migra- 
tion from the blue bed to the brown. I could from my heart wish 
that you and she (Mrs. Hodson), and Lissoy and Bally mahon, and all 
of you, would fairly make a migration into Middlesex ; though, upon 
second thoughts, this might be attended with a few inconveniences. 
Therefore, as the mountain will not come to Mohammed, why Mo- 
hammed shall go to the mountain ; or, to speak plain English, as you 
cannot conveniently pay me a visit, if next summer I can contrive to 
be absent six weeks from London, I shall spend three of them among 
my friends in Ireland. But first, believe me, my design is purely to 
visit, and neither to cut a figure nor levy contributions-; neither to ex- 
cite envy nor solicit favor ; in fact, my circumstances are adapted to 
neither. I am too poor to be gazed at, and too rich to need assistance." 



CHAPTER IX. 

Foe some time Goldsmith continued to write miscellaneously for 
reviews and other periodical publications, but without making any 
decided hit, to use a technical term. Indeed as yet he appeared 
destitute of the strong excitement of literary ambition, and wrote 
only on the spur of necessity and at the urgent importunity of his 
bookseller. His indolent and truant disposition, ever averse from 
labor and delighting in holiday, had to be scourged up to its 
task ; still it was this very truant disposition which threw an 
unconscious charm over everything he wrote ; bringing with it 
honeyed thoughts and pictured images which had sprung up in 
his mind in the sunny hours of idleness : these effusions, dashed 
off on compulsion in the exigency of the moment, were published 
anonymously ; so that they made no collective impression on the 
public, and reflected no fame on the name of their author. 

In an essay published some time subsequently in the Bee, 
Goldsmith adverts in his own humorous way to his impatience at 



ORIENTAL PROJECTS. 69 

the tardiness with which his desultory and unacknowledged essays 
crept into notice, "I was once induced," says he, "to show my 
indignation against the public by discontinuing my efforts to 
please ; and was bravely resolved, like Raleigh, to vex them by 
burning my manuscripts in a passion. Upon reflection, however, 
I considered what set or body of people would be displeased at my 
rashness. The sun, after so sad an accident, might shine next 
morning as bright as usual ; men might laugh and sing the next 
day, and transact business as before ; and not a single creature 
feel any regret but myself. Instead of having Apollo in mourn- 
ing or the Muses in a fit of the spleen ; instead of having the 
learned world apostrophizing at my untimely decease ; perhaps all 
Grub Street might laugh at my fate, and self-approving dignity 
be unable to shield me from ridicule." 

Circumstances occurred about this time to give a new direction 
to Goldsmith's hopes and schemes. Having resumed for a brief 
period the superintendence of the Peckham school, during a fit of 
illness of Dr. Milner, that gentleman, in requital for his timely 
services, promised to use his influence with a friend, an East- 
India director, to procure him a medical aiDpointment in India. 

There w^as every reason to believe that the influence of Dr. 
Milner would be eff'ectual; but how was Goldsmith to find the 
ways and means of fitting himself out for a voyage to the Indies 1 
In this emergency he was driven to a more extended exercise of 
the pen than he had yet attempted. His skirmishing among 
books as a reviewer, and his disputatious ramble among the 
schools and universities and literati of the Continent, had filled 
his mind with facts and observations which he now^ set about di- 
gesting into a treatise of some magnitude, to be entitled An In- 
quiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe. As 
the work grew on his hands, his sanguine temper ran ahead of 
his labors. Feeling secure of success in England, he was anxious 
to forestall the piracy of the Irish press ; for as yet, the union not 
having taken place, the English law of copyright did not extend 
to the other side of the Irish channel. He wrote, therefore, to 



70 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

his friends in Ireland, urging them to circulate his proposals for 
his contemplated work, and obtain subscriptions payable in ad- 
vance ; the money to be transmitted to a Mr. Bradley, an eminent 
bookseller in Dublin, who would give a receii3t for it and be ac- 
countable for the delivery of the books. The letters written by 
him on this occasion are worthy of copious citation as being full 
of character and interest. One was to his relative and college 
intimate, Edward Wells, who had studied for the bar, but was 
now living at ease on his estate at Roscommon. " You have 
quitted," writes Goldsmith, " the plan of life which you once in- 
tended to pursue, and given up ambition for domestic tranquillity. 
I cannot avoid feeling some regret that one of my few friends has 
declined a pursuit in which he had every reason to expect success. 
I have often let my fancy loose when you were the subject, and 
have imagined you gracing the bench, or thundering at the bar : 
while I have taken no small pride to myself, and whispered to all 
that I could come near, that this was my cousin. Instead of this, 
it seems, you are merely contented to be a happy man ; to be 
esteemed by your acquaintances ; to cultivate your paternal acres ; 
to take unmolested a nap under one of your own hawthorns, or 
in Mrs. Wells's bedchamber, which, even a poet must confess, is 
rather the more comfortable place of the two. But, however your 
resolutions may be altered with regard to your situation in life, I 
persuade myself they are unalterable with respect to your friends 
in it. I cannot think the world has taken such entire possession 
of that heart (once so susceptible of friendship) as not to have left 
a corner there for a friend or two, but I flatter myself that even I 
have a place among the number. This I have a claim to from the 
similitude of our dispositions ; or setting that aside, I can demand 
it as a right by the most equitable law of nature : I mean that of 
retaliation; for indeed you have more than your share in mine. 
I am a man of few professions ; • and yet at this very instant I can- 
not avoid the painful apprehension that my present professions 
(which speak not half my feelings) should be considered only as a 
pretext to cover a request, as I have a request to make. No, my 



LETTEB TO EGBERT BRYANTON. 71 

dear Ned, I know you are too generous to think so, and you know 
me too proud to stoop to unnecessary insincerity ; — I have a re- 
quest, it is true, to make ; but as I know to whom I am a petitioner, 
I make it without diffidence or confusion. It is in short this : I am 
going to publish a book in London," &c. The residue of the 
letter specifies the nature of the request, which was merely to aid 
in circulating his proposals and obtaining subscriptions. The 
letter of the poor author, however, was unattended to and unac- 
knowledged by the prosperous Mr. Wells, of Roscommon, though 
in after-years he was proud to claim relationship to Dr. Gold- 
smith, when he had risen to celebrity. 

Another of Goldsmith's letters was to Robert Bryanton, with 
whom he had long ceased to be in correspondence. "I believe," 
writes he, " that they who are drunk, or out of their wits, fancy 
everybody else in the same condition. Mine is a friendship that 
neither distance nor time can efface, which is probably the reason 
that, for the soul of me, I can't avoid thinking yours of the same 
complexion ; and yet I have many reasons for being of a contrary 
opinion, else why, in so long an absence, was I never made a part- 
ner in your concerns ? To hear of your success would have given 
me the utmost pleasure ; and a communication of your very disap- 
pointments would divide the uneasiness I too frequently feel for 
my own. Indeed, my dear Bob, you don't conceive how unkindly 
you have treated one whose circiunstances afford him few pros- 
pects of pleasure, except those reflected from the happiness of his 
friends. However, since you have not let me hear from you, I 
have in some measure disappointed your neglect by frequently 
thinking of you. Every day or so I remember the calm anecdotes 
of your life, from the fireside to the easy-chair j recall the various 
adventures that first cemented our friendship ; the school, the col- 
lege, or the tavern ; preside in fancy over your cards ; and am dis- 
pleased at your bad play when the rubber goes against you, 
though not with all that agony of soul as when I was once your 
partner. Is it not strange that two of such like affections should 
be so much separated, and so differently employed as we are? 



72 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

You seem placed at the centre of fortune's wheel, and, let it re- 
volve ever so fast, are insensible of the motion. I seem to have 
been tied to the circumference, and whirled disagreeably round, as 
if on a whirligig." 

He then runs into a whimsical and extravagant tirade about 
his future prospects, the wonderful career of fame and fortune 
that awaits him, and after indulging in all kinds of humorous 
gasconades, concludes : " Let me, then, stop my fancy to take a 
view of my future self, — and, as the boys say, light down to see 
myself on horseback. Well, now that I am down, where the d — 1 
is I ? Oh gods ! gods ! here in a garret, writing for bread, and 
expecting to be dunned for a milk score ! " 

He would, on this occasion, have doubtless written to his 
uncle Contarine, but that generous friend was sunk into a helpless 
hopeless state from which death soon released him. 

Cut off thus from the kind cooperation of his uncle, he ad- 
dresses a letter to his daughter Jane, the companion of his school- 
boy and happy days, now the wife of Mr. Lawder. The object was 
to secure her interest with her husband in promoting the circula- 
tion of his proposals. The letter is full of character. 

" If you should ask," he begins, " why, in an interval of so many 
years, you never heard from me, permit me, madam, to ask the same 
question. I have the best excuse in recrimination. I wrote to Kil- 
more from Leyden in Holland, from Louvain in Flanders, and Rouen 
in France, but received no answer. To what could I attribute this 
silence but to displeasure or forgetfulness ? Whether I was riglit in 
my conjecture I do not pretend to determine ; but this I must ingen- 
uously own, that I have a thousand times in my turn endeavored to 
forget them, wliom I could not but look upon as forgetting me. I have 
attempted to blot their names from my memory, and, I confess it, 
spent whole days in efforts to tear their image from my heart. Could 
I have succeeded, you had not now been troubled with this renewal 
of a discontinued correspondence ; but, as every effort the rest- 
less make to procure sleep serves but to keep them waking, all my 
attempts contributed to impress what I would forget deeper on my 
imagination. But this subject I would willingly turn from, and yet, 
' for the soul of me,' I can't till 1 have said all. I was, madam, when 



LETTER TO COUSIN JANE. 73 

I discontinued writing to Kilmore, in such circumstances, that all my 
endeavors to continue your regards might be attributed to wrong mo- 
tives. My letters might be looked upon as the petitions of a beggar, 
and not the offerings of a friend ; while all my professions, instead of 
being considered of the result of disinterested esteem, might be as- 
cribed to venal insincerity. I believe, indeed, you had too much 
generosity to place them in such a light, but I could not bear even the 
shadow of such a suspicion. The most delicate friendships are always 
most sensible of the slightest invasion, and the strongest jealousy is 
ever attendant on the warmest regard. I could not — I own I could 
not — continue a correspondence in which every acknowledgment for 
past favors might be considered as an indirect request for future ones ; 
and where it might be thought I gave my heart from a motive of 
gratitude alone, when I was conscious of having bestowed it on much 
more disinterested principles. It is true, this conduct might have been 
simple enough ; but yourself must confess it was in character. Those 
who know me at all, know that I have always been actuated by dif- 
ferent principles from the rest of mankind : and while none regarded 
the interest of his friend more, no man on earth regarded his own less. 
I have often affected bluntness to avoid the imputation of flattery ; 
have frequently seemed to overlook those merits too obvious to escape 
notice, and pretended disregard to those instances of good nature and 
good sense, which I could not fail tacitly to applaud ; and all this lest 
I should be ranked among the grinning tribe, who say ' very true ' to 
all that is said ; who All a vacant chair at a tea-table ; whose narrow 
souls never moved in a wider circle than the circumference of a guinea ; 
and who had rather be reckoning the money in your pocket than the 
virtue in your breast. All this, I say, I have done, and a thousand 
other very silly, though very disinterested, things in my time ; and 
for all which no soul cares a farthing about me. ... Is it to be 
wondered that he should once in his life forget you, who has been all 
his life forgetting himself ? However, it is probable you may one of 
these days see me turned into a perfect hunks, and as dark and intri- 
cate as a mouse-hole. I have already given my landlady orders for 
an entire reform in the state of my finances. I declaim against hot 
suppers, drink less sugar in my tea, and check my grate with brick- 
bats. Instead of hanging my room with pictures, I intend to adorn 
it with maxims of frugality. Those will make pretty furniture enough, 
and won't be a bit too expensive ; for I will draw them all out with 
my own hands, and my landlady's daughter shall frame them with 
the parings of my black waistcoat. Each maxim is to be inscribed 



74 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

on a sheet of clean paper, and wrote with my best pen ; of which the 
following will serve as a specimen. Look sharp : Hind the main 
chance : Money is money now : If you have a thousand pounds you 
can put your hands by your sides, and say you are worth a thousand 
pounds every day of the year : Take a farthing from a hundred and it 
will be a hundred no longer. Thus, which way soever I turn my eyes, 
they are sure to meet one of those friendly monitors ; and as we are 
told of an actor who hung his room round with looking-glass to correct 
the defects of his person, my apartment shall be furnished in a pecul- 
iar manner, to correct the errors of my mind. Faith ! madam, I 
heartily wish to be rich, if it were only for this reason, to say without 
a blush how much I esteem you. But, alas ! I have many a fatigue 
to encounter before that happy time comes, when your poor old sim- 
ple friend may again give a loose to the luxuriance of his nature ; sit- 
ting by Kilmore fireside, recount the various adventures of a hard- 
fought life ; laugh over the follies of the day ; join his flute to your 
harpsichord ; and forget that ever he starved in those streets where 
Butler and Otway starved before him. And now I mention those 
great names — my Uncle ! he is no more that soul of fire as when I once 
knew him. Newton and Swift grew dim with age as well as he. But 
what shall I say ? His mind was too active an inhabitant not to dis- 
order the feeble mansion of its abode ; for the richest jewels soonest 
wear their settings. Yet, who but the fool would lament his condi- 
tion ! He now forgets the calamities of life. Perhaps indulgent 
Heaven has given him a foretaste of that tranquillity here, which he so 
well deserves hereafter. But I must come to business ; for business, 
as one of my maxims tells me, must be minded or lost. I am agoing 
to publish in London a book entitled The Present State of Taste 
and Literature in Europe. The booksellers in Ireland republish every 
performance there without making the author any consideration. I 
would, in this respect, disappoint their avarice, and have all the profits 
of my labor to myself. I must, therefore, request Mr. Lawder to cir- 
culate among his friends and acquaintances a hundred of my proposals, 
which I have given the bookseller, Mr. Bradley in Dame Street, direc- 
tions to send to him. If, in pursuance of such circulation, he should 
receive any subscriptions, I entreat, when collected, they may be sent 
to Mr. Bradley, as aforesaid, who will give a receipt, and be account- 
able for the work, or a return of the subscription. If this request 
(which, if it be complied with, will in some measure be an encourage- 
ment to a man of learning) should be disagreeable or troublesome, I 
would not press it ; for I would be the last man on earth to have my 



ORIENTAL APPOINTMENT. 75 

labors go a-begging ; but if I know Mr. Lawder (and sure I ought to 
know him), he will accept the employment with pleasure. All I can 
say — if he writes a book, I will get him two hundred subscribers, and 
those of the best wits in Europe. Whether this request is complied 
with or not, I shall not be uneasy ; but there is one petition I must 
make to him and to you, which I solicit with the warmest ardor, and 
in which I cannot bear a refusal. I mean, dear madam, that I may be 
allowed to subscribe myself, your ever affectionate and obliged kins- 
man, Oliver Goldsmith. Now see how I blot and blunder, when I 
am asking a favor." 



CHAPTER X. 

While Goldsmitb was yet laboring at his treatise, the promise 
made him by Dr. Milner was carried into effect, and he was actu- 
ally appointed physician and surgeon to one of the factories on the 
coast of Coromandel. His imagination was immediately on fire 
with visions of Oriental wealth and magnificence. It is true the 
salary did not exceed one hundred pounds, but then, as appointed 
physician, he would have the exclusive practice of the place, 
amounting to one thousand pounds per annum ; with advantages 
to be derived from trade and from the high interest of money — 
twenty per cent. ; in a word, for once in his life, the road to for- 
tune lay broad and straight before him. 

Hitherto, in his correspondence with his friends, he had said 
nothing of his India scheme ; but now he imparted to them his 
brilliant prospects, urging the importance of their circulating his 
proposals and obtaining him subscriptions and advances on his forth- 
coming work, to furnish funds for his outfit. 

In the meantime he had to task that poor drudge, his Muse, for 
present exigencies. Ten pounds were demanded for his appoint- 
ment-warrant. Other expenses pressed hard upon him. Fortu- 
nately, though as yet unknown to fame, his literary capability was 
knowm to " the trade," and the coinage of his brain passed current 
in Grub Street. Archibald Hamilton, proprietor of the Critical 
Review J the rival to that of Grifl&ths, readily made him a small 



V6 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

advance on receiving three articles for his periodical. His purse 
thus slenderly replenished, Goldsmith paid for his warrant ; wiped 
off the score of his milkmaid ; abandoned his garret, and moved 
into a shabby first floor in a forlorn court near the Old Bailey; 
there to await the time of his migration to the magnificent coast of 
Coromandel. 

Alas ! poor G-oldsmith ! ever doomed to disappointment. Early 
in the gloomy month of November, that mouth of fog and despond- 
ency in London, he learnt the shipwreck of his hope. The great 
Coromandel enterprise fell through ; or rather the post promised 
him was transferred to some other candidate. The cause of this 
disappointment it is now impossible to ascertain. The death of 
his quasi patron, Dr. Milner, which happened about this time, 
may have had some effect in producing it; or there may have 
been some heedlessness and blunder on his own part ; or some 
obstacle arising from his insuperable indigence ; — whatever may 
have been the cause, lie never mentioned it, which gives some 
ground to surmise that he himself was to blame. His friends 
learnt with surprise that he had suddenly relinquished his ap- 
pointment to India, about which he had raised such sanguine ex- 
pectations : some accused him of fickleness and caprice ; others 
supposed him unwilling to tear himself from the growing fasci- 
nations of the literary society of London. 

In the meantime, cut down in his hopes, and humiliated in his 
pride by the failure of his Coromandel scheme, he sought, without 
consulting his friends, to be examined at the College of Physi- 
cians for the humble situation of hospital mate. Even here pov- 
erty stood in his way. It was necessary to appear in a decent 
garb before the examining committee ; but how was he to do so 1 
He was literally out at elbows as well as out of cash. Here again 
the Muse, so often jilted and neglected by him, came to his aid. 
In consideration of four articles furnished to the Monthly Review, 
G-riffiths, his old task-master, was to become his security to the 
tailor for a suit of clothes. Goldsmith said he wanted them but 
for a single occasion, upon which depended his appointment to a 



SUIT OF CLOTHES IN PAWN. 77 

situation in the army ; as soon as that temporary purpose was 
served they would either be returned or paid for. The books to 
be reviewed were accordingly lent to him ; the Muse was again 
set to her compulsory drudgery; the articles were scribbled off 
and sent to the bookseller, and the clothes came in due time from 
the tailor. 

From the records of the College of Surgeons, it appears that 
Goldsmith underwent his examination at Surgeons' Hall, on the 
21st of December, 1758. Either from a confusion of mind inci- 
dent to sensitive and imaginative persons on such occasions, or 
from a real want of surgical science, which last is extremely prob- 
able, he failed in his examination, and was rejected as unqualified. 
The effect of such a rejection was to disqualify him for every 
branch of public service, though he might have claimed a reexam- 
ination, after the interval of a few months devoted to further 
study. Such a reexamination he never attempted, nor did he ever 
communicate his discomfiture to any of his friends. 

On Christmas-day, but four days after his rejection by the 
College of Surgeons, while he was suffering under the mortification 
of defeat and disappointment, and hard pressed for means of sub- 
sistence, he was surprised by the entrance into his room of the 
poor woman of whom he hired his wretched apartment, and to 
whom he owed some small arrears of rent. She had a piteous tale 
of distress, and was clamorous in her afflictions. Her husband 
had been arrested in the night for debt, and thrown into prison. 
This was too much for the quick feelings of Goldsmith ; he was 
ready at any time to help the distressed, but in this instance he 
was himself in some measure a cause of the distress. What was to 
be done 1 He had no money, it is true ; but there hung the new 
suit of clothes in which he had stood his unlucky examination at 
Surgeons' Hall. Without giving himself time for reflection, he 
sent it ofl" to the pawnbroker's, and raised thereon a sufficient sum 
to pay oft' his own debt, and to release his landlord from prison. 

Under the same pressure of penury and despondency, he bor- 
rowed from a neighbor a pittance to relieve his immediate wants, 



78 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

leaving as a security the books which he had recently reviewed. 
In the midst of these straits and harassments, he received a letter 
from Griffiths, demanding, in peremptory terms, the return of the 
clothes and books, or immediate payment for the same. It ap- 
pears that he had discovered the identical suit at the pawn- 
broker's. The reply of Goldsmith is not known ; it was out of 
his power to furnish either the clothes or the money ; but he 
probably offered once more to make the Muse stand his bail. His 
reply only increased the ire of the wealthy man of trade, and drew 
from him another letter still more harsh than the first ; using the 
epithets of knave and sharper, and containing threats of prosecu- 
tion and a prison. 

The following letter from poor Goldsmith gives the most touch- 
ing picture of an inconsiderate but sensitive man, harassed by care, 
stung by humiliations, and driven almost to despondency. 

" Sir, — I know of no misery but a jail to which my own imprii- 
dences and your letter seem to point. I have seen it inevitable these 
three or four weeks, and, by heavens ! request it as a favor — as a favor 
that may prevent somethmg more fatal. I have been some years strug- 
gling with a wretched being — with all that contempt that indigence 
brings with it — with all those passions which make contempt insupport- 
able. What, then, has a jail that is formidable ? I shall at least have 
the society of wretches, and such is to me true society. I tell you, again 
and again, that I am neither able nor willing to pay you a farthing, 
but I will be punctual to any appointment you or the tailor shall 
make ; thus far, at least, I do not act the sharper, since, unable to pay 
my own debts one way, I would generally give some security another. 
No, sir ; had I been a sharper — had I been possessed of less good-nature 
and native generosity, I might surely now have been in better cir- 
cumstances. 

"I am guilty, I own, of meannesses which poverty unavoidably 
brings with it : my reflections are filled with repentance for my 
imprudence, but not with any remorse for being a villain : that may 
be a character you unjustly charge me with. Your books, I can 
assure you, are neither pawned nor sold, but in the custody of a 
friend, from whom my necessities obliged me to borrow some money : 
whatever becomes of my person, you shall have them in a month. 
It is very possible both the reports you heard and your own sugges- 



ADJUSTMENT OF DISPUTE. 79 

tions may have brought you false information with respect to my 
character ; it is very possible that the man whom you now regard with 
detestation may inwardly burn with grateful resentment. It is very 
possible that, upon a second perusal of the letter I sent you, you may 
see the workings of a mind strongly agitated with gratitude and 
jealousy. If such circumstances should appear, at least spare invec- 
tive till my book with Mr. Dodsley shall be published, and then, per- 
haps, you may see the bright side of a mind, when my professions 
shall not appear the dictates of necessity, but of choice. 

" You seem to think Dr. Milner knew me not. Perhaps so ; but he 
was a man I shall ever honor ; but I have friendships only with the 
dead ! I ask pardon for taking up so much time ; nor shall I add to it 
by any other professions than that I am, sir, your humble servant, 

■ " Oliver Goldsmith. 

" P.S. — I shall expect impatiently the result of your resolutions. " 

The dispute between the poet and the publisher was afterward 
imperfectly adjusted, and it would appear that the clothes were 
paid for by a short compilation advertised by Griffiths in the course 
of the following month ; but the parties were never really friends 
afterward, and the writings of Goldsmith were harshly and un- 
justly treated in the Monthly Eeview. 

We have given the preceding anecdote in detail, as furnishing 
one of the many instances in which Goldsmith's prompt and 
benevolent impulses outran all prudent forecast, and involved him 
in difficulties and disgraces which a more selfish man would have 
avoided. The pawning of the clothes, charged upon him as a 
crime by the grinding bookseller, and apparently admitted by him 
as one of "the meannesses which poverty unavoidably brings with 
it," resulted, as we have shown, from a tenderness of heart and 
generosity of hand, in which another man would have gloried; 
but these were such natural elements with him, that he was 
unconscious of their merit. It is a pity that wealth does not 
oftener bring such " meannesses " in its train. 

And now let us be indulged in a few particulars about these 
lodgings in which Goldsmith was guilty of this thoughtless act 
of benevolence. They were in a very shabby house, No. 12 Green 
Arbor Court, between the Old Bailey and Fleet Market. An old 



80 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

woman was still living in 1820 who was a relative of the identical 
landlady whom Goldsmith relieved by the money received from the 
pawnbroker. She was a child about seven years of age at the 
time that the poet rented his apartment of her relative, and used 
frequently to be at the house in Green Arbor Court. She was 
drawn there, in a great measure, by the good-humored kindness of 
Goldsmith, who was always exceedingly fond of the society of 
children. He used to assemble those of the family in his room, 
give them cakes and sweetmeats, and set them dancing to the 
sound of his flute. He was very friendly to those around him, and 
cultivated a kind of intimacy with a watchmaker in the Court, 
who possessed much native wit and humor. He passed most of 
the day, however, in his room, and only went out in the evenings. 
His days were no doubt devoted to the drudgery of the pen, and it 
would appear that he occasionally found the booksellers urgent 
task-masters. On one occasion a visitor was shown up to his 
room, and immediately their voices were heard in high altercation, 
and the key was turned within the lock. The landlady, at first, 
was disposed to go to the assistance of her lodger ; but a calm 
succeeding, she forbore to interfere. 

Late in the evening the door was unlocked ; a supper ordered 
by the visitor from a neighboring tavern, and Goldsmith and his 
intrusive guest finished the evening in great good-humor. It was 
probably his old task-master Griffiths, whose press might have 
been waiting, and who found no other mode of getting a stipu- 
lated task from Goldsmith than by locking him in, and staying 
by hiin until it was finished. 

But we have a more particular account of these lodgings in 
Green Arbor Court from the Rev. Thomas Percy, afterward 
Bishop of Dromore, and celebrated for his relics of ancient poetry, 
his beautiful ballads, and other works. During an occasional 
visit to London, he was introduced to Goldsmith by Grainger, and 
ever after continued one of his most steadfast and valued friends. 
The following is his description of the poet's squalid apartment : 
"I called on Goldsmith at his lodgings in March, 1759, and 



BEAU TIBBS. 81 

found him writing his 'Inquiry,' in a miserable, dirty-looking 
room, in which there was but one chair ; and when, from civility, 
he resigned it to me, he himself was obliged to sit in the window. 
While we were conversing together, some one tapped gently at the 
door, and, being desired to come in, a poor ragged little girl, of a 
very becoming demeanor, entered the room, and, dropping a cour- 
tesy, said, 'My mamma sends her compliments, and begs the 
favor of you to lend her a chamber-pot full of coals.' " 

We are reminded in this anecdote of Goldsmith's picture of the 
lodgings of Beau Tibbs, and of the peep into the secrets of a 
make-shift establishment given to a visitor by the blundering old 
Scotch woman. 

" By this time we were arrived as high as the stairs would permit 
us to ascend, till we came to what he was facetiously pleased to call 
the first floor- down the chimney ; and, knocking at the door, a voice 
from within demanded ' Who's there ? ' My conductor answered that 
it was him. But this not satisfying the querist, the voice again re- 
peated the demand, to which he answered louder than before ; and 
now the door was opened by an old woman with cautious reluctance. 

"When we got in, he welcomed me to his house with great cere- 
mony ; and, turning to the old woman, asked where was her lady. 
'Good troth,' replied she, in a peculiar dialect, 'she's washing your 
twa shirts at the next door, because they have taken an oath against 
lending the tub any longer.' 'My two shirts,' cried he, in a tone 
that faltered with confusion ; ' what does the idiot mean ? ' 'I ken 
what I mean weel enough,' replied the other; 'she's washing your 
twa shirts at the next door, because ' — ' Fire and fury ! no more of 
thy stupid explanations,' cried he ; 'go and inform her we have com- 
pany. Were that Scotch hag to be for ever in my family, she would 
never learn politeness, nor forget that absurd poisonous accent of 
hers, or testify the smallest specimen of breeding or high life ; and 
yet it is very surprising too, as I had her from a Parliament man, a 
friend of mine from the Highlands, one of the politest men in the 
world ; but that's a secret.' " i 

Let us linger a little in Green Arbor Court, a place consecrated 
by the genius and the poverty of Goldsmith, but recently oblit- 

1 Citizen of the World, letter iv. 



82 OLIVER GOLDSMITH, 

erated in the course of modern improvements. The writer of this 
memoir visited it not many years since on a literary pilgrimage, 
and may be excused for repeating a description of it which he has 
heretofore inserted in another publication. 

"It then existed in its pristine state, and was a small square of tall 
and miserable houses, the very intestines of which seemed turned in- 
side out, to judge from the old garments and frippery that fluttered 
from every window. It appeared to be a region of washerwomen, and 
lines were stretched about the little square, on which clothes were 
dangling to dry. 

"Just as we entered the square, a scuffle took place between two 
viragoes about a disputed right to a wash-tub, and immediately the 
whole community was in a hubbub. Heads in mob-caps popped out of 
every window, and such a clamor of tongues ensued that I was fain to 
stop my ears. Every amazon took part with one or other of the dis- 
putants, and brandished her arms, dripping with soapsuds, and fired 
away from her window as from the embrasure of a fortress ; while the 
screams of children nestled and cradled in every procreant chamber of 
this hive, waking with the noise, set up their shrill i)lpes to swell the 
general concert." ^ 

While in these forlorn quarters, suffering under extreme depres- 
sion of spirits, caused by his failure at Surgeons' Hall, the disap- 
pointment of his hopes, and his harsh collisions with Grrifliths, 
Goldsmith wrote the following letter to his brother Henry, some 
parts of which are most touchingly mournful. 

"Dear Sir, — 

" Your punctuality in answering a man whose trade is writing, is 
more than I had reason to expect ; and yet you see me generally fill a 
whole sheet, which is all the recompense I can make for being so fre- 
quently troublesome. The behavior of Mr. Mills and Mr. Lawder is 
a little extraordinary. However, their answering neither you nor me 
is a sufficient indication of their disliking the employment which I 
assigned them. As their conduct is different from what I had ex- 
pected, so I have made an alteration in mine. I shall, the beginning 
of next month, send over two hundred and fifty books,^ which are all 

1 Tales of a Traveller. 

2 The Inquiry into Polite Literature. His previous remarjis apply to 
the subscription. 



LETTER TO HIS B EOT HER. 83 

that I fancy can be well sold among you, and I would have you make 
some distinction in the persons who have subscribed. The money, 
which will amount to sixty pounds, may be left with Mr. Bradley as 
soon as possible. I am not certain but I shall quickly have occasion 
for it. 

" I have met with no disappointment with respect to my East India 
voyage, nor are my resolutions altered ; though, at the same time, I 
must confess, it gives me some pain to think I am almost beginning 
the world at the age of thirty-one. Though I never had a day's sick- 
ness since I saw you, yet I am not that strong, active man you once 
knew me. You scarcely can conceive how much eight years of disap- 
pointment, anguish, and study have worn me down. If I remember 
right, you are seven or eight years older than me, yet I dare venture 
to say, that, if a stranger saw us both, he would pay me the honors of 
seniority. Imagine to yourself a pale, melancholy visage, with two 
great wrinkles between the eyebrows, with an eye disgustingly severe, 
and a big wig, and you may have a perfect picture of my present 
appearance. On the other hand, I conceive you as perfectly sleek 
and healthy, passing many a happy day among your own children, or 
those who knew you a child. 

" Since I knew what it was to be a man, this is a pleasure I have 
not known. I have passed my days among a parcel of cool, designing 
beings, and have contracted all their suspicious manner in my own be- 
havior. I should actually be as unfit for the society of my friends at 
home, as I detest that which I am obliged to partake of here. I can 
now neither partake of the pleasure of a revel, nor contribute to raise 
its jollity. I can neither laugh nor drink ; have contracted a hesitat- 
ing, disagreeable manner of speaking, and a visage that looks ill-nature 
itself ; in short, I have thought myself into a settled melancholy, and 
an utter disgust of all that life brings with it. Whence this romantic 
turn that all our family are possessed with ? Whence this love for every 
place and every country but that in which we reside — for every occupa- 
tion but our own ? this desire of fortune, and yet this eagerness to dis- 
sipate ? I perceive, my dear sir, that I am at intervals for indulging 
this splenetic manner, and following my own taste, regardless of yours. 

"The reasons you have given me for breeding up your son a 
scholar are judicious and convincing ; I should, however, be glad to 
know for what particular profession he is designed. If he be assidu- 
ous and divested of strong passions (for passions in youth always lead 
to pleasure), he may do very well in your college; for it must be 
owned that the industrious poor have good encouragement there, per- 



84 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

haps better than in any other in Europe. But if he has ambition, 
strong passions, and an exquisite sensibility of contempt, do not send 
liim there, unless you have no other trade for him but your own. It 
is impossible to conceive how much may be done by proper education 
at home. A boy, for instance, who understands perfectly well Latin, 
French, arithmetic, and the principles of the civil law, and can write 
a fine hand, has an education that may qualify him for any undertak- 
ing ; and these parts of learning should be carefully inculcated, let him 
be designed for whatever calling he will. 

" Above all things, let him never touch a romance or novel: these 
paint beauty in colors more charming than nature, and describe hap- 
piness that man never tastes. How delusive, how destructive are those 
pictures of consummate bliss ! They teach the youthful mind to sigh 
after beauty and happiness that never existed ; to despise the little 
good which fortune has mixed in our cup, by expecting more than she 
ever gave ; and, in general, take the word of a man who has seen the 
world, and who has studied human nature more by experience than 
precept ; take my word for it, I say, that books teach us very little of 
the world. The greatest merit in a state of poverty would only serve 
to make the possessor ridiculous — may distress, but cannot relieve 
him. Frugality, and even avarice, in the lower orders of mankind, 
are true ambition. These afford the only ladder for the poor to rise to 
preferment. Teach then, my dear sir, to your son, thrift and econ- 
omy. Let his poor wandering uncle's example be placed before his 
eyes. I had learned from books to be disinterested and generous, 
before I was taught from experience the necessity of being prudent. 
I had contracted the habits and notions of a philosopher, while I was 
exposing myself to the approaches of insidious cunning ; and often by 
being, even with my narrow finances, charitable to excess, I forgot the 
rules of justice, and placed myself in the very situation of the wretcli 
who thanked me for my bounty. When I am in the remotest part of 
the world, tell him this, and perhaps he may improve from my example. 
But I find myself again falling into my gloomy habits of thinking. 

"My mother, I am informed, is almost blind; even though I had 
the utmost inclination to return home, under such circumstances I 
could not, for to behold her in distress without a capacity of relieving 
her from it, would add much to my splenetic habit. Your last letter 
was much too short ; it should have answered some queries I had 
made in my former. Just sit down as I do, and write forward until 
you have filled all your paper. It requires no thought, at least from 
the ease with which my own sentiments rise when they are addressed 



LETTER TO HIS BEOTHEE. 85 

to you. For, believe me, my head has no share in all I write ; my 
heart dictates the whole. Pray give my love to Bob Bryanton, and 
entreat him from me not to drink. My dear sir, give me some account 
about poor Jenny. i Yet her husband loves her: if so, she cannot be 
unhappy. 

"I know not whether I should tell you — yet why should I conceal 
these trifles, or, indeed, anything from you ? There is a book of mine 
will be published in a few days : the life of a very extraordinary man ; 
no less than the great Voltaire. You know already by the title that it 
is no more than a catchpenny. However, I spent but four weeks on the 
whole performance, for which I received twenty pounds. When pub- 
lished, I shall take some method of conveying it to you, unless you 
may think it dear of the postage, which may amount to four or five 
shillings. However, I fear you will not find an equivalent of amuse- 
ment. 

" Your last letter, I repeat it, was too short ; you should have given 
me your opinion of the design of the heroi-comical poem which I sent 
you. You remember I intended to introduce the hero of the poem as 
lying in a paltry ale-house. You may take the following specimen of 
the manner, which I flatter myself is quite original. The room in 
which he lies may be described somewhat in this way : — 

" ' The window, patched with paper, lent a ray 
That feebly show'd the state in which he lay ; 
The sanded floor that grits beneath the tread, 
The humid wall with paltry pictures spread ; 
The game of goose was there exposed to view, 
And the twelve rules the royal martyr drew ; 
The Seasons, framed with listing, found a place, 
And Prussia's monarch show'd his lamp-black face. 
The morn was cold : he views with keen desire 
A rusty grate unconscious of a fire ; 
An unpaid reckoning on the frieze was scored, 
And five crack' d tea-cups dress' d the chimney-board.' 

" And now imagine, after his soliloquy, the landlord to make his 
appearance in order to dun him for the reckoning : — 

" ' Not with that face, so servile and so gay, 
That welcomes every stranger that can pay : 

1 His sister, Mrs. Johnston ; her marriage, like that of Mrs. Hodson, was 
private, but in pecuniary matters much less fortunate. 



86 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

With sulky eye he smoked the patient man, 

Then pull'd his breeches tight, and thus began,' &c.'^ 

" All this is taken, you see, from nature. It is a good remark of 

Montaigne's, that the wisest men often have friends with whom they 

do not care how much they play the fool. Take my present follies as 

instances of my regard. Poetry is a much easier and more agreeable 

species of composition than prose ; and, could a man live by it, it were 

not unpleasant employment to be a poet. I am resolved to leave no 

space, though I should fill it up only by telling you, what you very 

well know already, I mean that I am your most affectionate friend and 

brother, 

"Oliver Goldsmith." 

The Life of Voltaire, alluded to in the latter part of the 
preceding letter, was the literary job undertaken to satisfy the 
demands of Griffiths. It was to have preceded a translation of 
the Henriade, by Ned Purdon, Goldsmith's old schoolmate, now 
a Grub-Street writer, who starved rather than lived by the exer- 
cise of his pen, and often tasked Goldsmith's scanty means to 
relieve his hunger. His miserable career was summed up by 
our poet in the following lines wTitten some years after the 
time we are treating of, on hearing tliat he had suddenly 
dropped dead in Smithfield : — 

" Here lies poor Ned Purdon, from misery freed. 
Who long was a bookseller's hack : 
He led such a damnable life in this world, 
I don't think he'll wish to come back," 

The memoir and translation, though advertised to form a 
volume, were not published together, but appeared separately in 
a magazine. 

As to the heroi-comical poem, also, cited in the foregoing 
letter, it appears to have perished in embryo. Had it been 
brought to maturity, w^e should have had further traits of auto- 
biography ; the room already described was probably his own 
squalid quarters in Green Arbor Court ; and in a subsequent 

1 The projected poem, of which the above were specimens, appears never 
to have been completed. 



I 



PUBLICATION OF THE ''INQUIBY.'' 87 

morsel of the poem we have the poet himself, under the eupho- 
nious name of Scroggin : — 

" Where the Red Lion peering o'er the way, 
Invites each passing stranger that can pay ; 
Where Calvert's butt and Parson's black champagne 
Regale the drabs and bloods of Drury Lane : 
There, in a lonely room, from bailiffs snug, 
The muse found Scroggin stretch'd beneath a rug; 
A niglitcap deck'd liis brows instead of bay, 
A cap by night, a stocking all the day ! " 

It is to be regretted that this poetical conception was not car- 
ried out ; like the author's other writings, it might have abounded 
with pictures of life and touches of nature drawn from his own 
observation and experience, and ihellowed by his own humane 
and tolerant spirit ; and might have been a worthy companion 
or rather contrast to his Traveller and Deserted Village, and 
have remained in the language a first-rate specimen of the mock- 
heroic. 



CHAPTER XI. 

TowAEDS the end of March, 1759, the treatise on which Gold- 
smith had laid so much stress, on which he at one time had 
calculated to defray the expenses of his outfit to India, and to 
which he had adverted in his correspondence with Griffiths, made 
its appearance. It was published by the Dodsleys, and entitled 
An Inquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Eu- 
rope. 

In the present day, when the whole field of contemporary 
literature is so widely surveyed and amply discussed, and when 
the current productions of every country are constantly collated 
and ably criticised, a treatise like that of Goldsmith would be con- 
sidered as extremely limited and unsatisfactory ; but at that time 
it possessed novelty in its views and wideness in its scope, and 
being imbued with the peculiar charm of style inseparable from 



88 OLIVEB GOLDSMITH. 

the author, it commanded public attention and a profitable sale. 
As it was the most important production that had yet come from 
Goldsmith's pen, he was anxious to have the credit of it ; yet 
it appeared without his name on the title-page. The author- 
ship, however, was well known throughout the world of letters, 
and the author had now grown into sufficient literary importance 
to become an object of hostility to the underlings of the press. 
One of the most virulent attacks upon him was in a criticism on 
this treatise, and appeared in the Monthly Review to which he 
himself had been recently a contributor. It slandered him as a 
man while it decried him as an author, and accused him, by innu- 
endo, of "laboring under the infamy of having, by the vilest and 
meanest actions, forfeited all pretensions to honor and honesty," 
and of practising " those acts which bring the sharper to the 
cart's tail or the pillory." 

It will be remembered that the Review was owned by Griffiths 
the bookseller, with whom Goldsmith had recently had a misunder- 
standing. The criticism, therefore, was no doubt dictated by the 
lingerings of resentment, and the imputations upon Goldsmith's 
character for honor and honesty, and the vile and mean actions 
hinted at, could only allude to the unfortunate pawning of the 
clothes. All this, too, was after Griffiths had received the affect- 
ing letter from Goldsmith, drawing a picture of his poverty and 
perplexities, and after the latter had made him a literary com- 
pensation. Griffiths, in fact, was sensible of the falsehood and 
extravagance of the attack, and tried to exonerate himself by 
declaring that the criticism was written by a person in his 
employ ; but we see no difference in atrocity between him who 
wields the knife and him who hires the cut-throat. It may be 
well, however, in passing, to bestow our mite of notoriety upon 
the miscreant who launched the slander. He deserves it for a 
long course of dastardly and venomous attacks, not merely upon 
Goldsmith, but upon most of the successful authors of the day. 
His name was Kenrick. He was originally a mechanic, but 
possessing some degree of talent and industry, applied himself to 



A LITER ABY ISHMAELITE. 89 

literature as a profession. This he pursued for many years, and 
tried his hand in every department of prose and poetry ; he 
wrote plays and satires, philosophical tracts, critical dissertations, 
and works on philology ; nothing from his pen ever rose to first- 
rate excellence, or gained him a popular name, though he 
received from some university the degree of Doctor of Laws. 
Dr. Johnson characterized his literary career in one short 
sentence. " Sir, he is one of the many who have made them- 
selves public without making themselves knoivn." 

Soured by his own want of success, jealous of the success of 
others, his natural irritability of temper increased by habits of 
intemperance, he at length abandoned himself to the practice of re- 
viewing, and became one of the Ishmaelites of the press. In this 
his malignant bitterness soon gave him a notoriety which his 
talents had never been able to attain. We shall dismiss him 
for the present with the following sketch of him by the hand of 
one of his contemporaries : — 

" Dreaming of genius which he never had, 
Half wit, half fool, half critic, and half mad ; 
Seizing, like Shirley, on the poet's lyre, 
With all his rage, but not one spark of fire ; 
Eager for slaughter, and resolved to tear 
Erom others' brows that wreath he must not wear — 
Next Kenrick came : all furious and replete 
With brandy, malice, pertness, and conceit ; 
Unskill'd in classic lore, through envy blind 
To all that's beauteous, learned, or refined : 
For faults alone behold the savage prowl. 
With reason's offal glut his ravening soul ; 
Pleased with his prey, its inmost blood he drinks, 
And mumbles, paws, and turns it — till it stinks." 

The British press about this time was extravagantly fruitful 
of periodical publications. That "oldest inhabitant," the Gentle- 
man's Magazine, almost coeval with St. John's gate which graced 
its title-page, had long been elbowed by magazines and reviews 
of all kinds : Johnson's Rambler had introduced the fashion of 



90 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

periodical essays, which he had followed up in his Adventurer 
and Idler. Imitations had sprung up on every side, under every 
variety of name ; until British literature was entirely overrun 
by a weedy and transient efflorescence. Many of these rival 
periodicals choked each other almost at the outset, and few of 
them have escaped oblivion. 

Goldsmith wrote for some of the most successful, such as the 
Bee, the Busy-hody, and the Lady^s Magazine. His essays, 
though characterized by his delightful style, his pure, benevolent 
morality, and his mellow, unobtrusive humor, did not produce 
equal effect at first with more garish writings of infinitely less 
value ; they did not " strike," as it is termed ; but they had that 
rare and enduring merit which rises in estimation on every 
perusal. They gradually stole upon the heart of the public, were 
copied into numerous contemporary publications, and now they are 
garnered up among the choice productions of British literature. 

In his Inquiry into the State of Polite Learning, Goldsmith 
had given offence to David Garrick, at that time autocrat of the 
Drama, and was doomed to experience its effect. A clamor had 
been raised against Garrick for exercising a despotism over the 
stage, and bringing forward nothing but old plays to the exclusion 
of original productions. Walpole joined in this charge. " Gar- 
rick," said he, " is treating the town as it deserves and likes to 
be treated, — with scenes, fire-works, and his oivn ivritings. A 
good new play I never expect to see more ; nor have seen since 
the 'Provoked Husband,' which came out when I was at school." 
Goldsmith, who was extremely fond of the theatre, and felt the 
evils of this system, inveighed in his treatise against the wrongs 
experienced by authors at the hands of managers. " Our poet's 
performance," said he, "must undergo a process truly chemical 
before it is presented to the public. It must be tried in the 
manager's fire ; strained through a licenser, suffer from repeated 
corrections, till it may be a mere caput mortuum when it arrives 
before the public." Again, — "Getting a play on even in three 
or four years is a privilege reserved only for the happy few who 



GABBICK AS A MANAGEB, 91 

have the arts of courting the manager as well as the Muse ; who 
have adulation to please his vanity, powerful patrons to support 
their merit, or money to indemnify disappointment. Our Saxon 
ancestors had but one name for a wit and a witch. I will not 
dispute the propriety of uniting those characters then ; but the 
man who under present discouragements ventures to write for 
the stage, whatever claim he may have to the appellation of a 
wit, at least has no right to be called a conjurer." But a passage 
which perhaps touched more sensibly than all the rest on the 
sensibilities of Garrick, was the following : — 

"I have no particular spleen against the fellow who sweeps the 
stage with the besom, or the hero who brushes it with his train. It 
were a matter of indifference to me, whether our heroines are in keep- 
ing, or our candle-snuffers burn their fingers, did not such make a great 
part of public care and polite conversation. Our actors assume all 
that state off the stage which they do on it ; and, to use an expression 
borrowed from the green-room, every one is up in his part. I am 
sorry to say it, they seem to forget their real characters." 

These strictures were considered by Garrick as intended for 
himself, and they were rankling in his mind when Goldsmith 
waited upon him and solicited his vote for the vacant secretary- 
ship of the Society of Arts, of which the manager was a member. 
Garrick, puffed up by his dramatic renown and his intimacy with 
the great, and knowing Goldsmith only by his budding reputation, 
may not have considered him of sufficient importance to be con- 
ciliated. In reply to his solicitations, he observed that he could 
hardly expect his friendly exertions after the unprovoked attack 
he had made upon his management. Goldsmith replied that he 
had indulged in no personalities, and had only spoken what he 
believed to be the truth. He made no further apology nor appli- 
cation ; failed to get the appointment, and considered Garrick his 
enemy. In the second edition of his treatise he expunged or modi- 
fied the passages which had given the manager offence ; but 
though the author and actor became intimate in after years, this 
false step at the outset of their intercourse was never forgotten. 



92 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

(• 

About this time Goldsmith engagid with Dr. Smollett, who 
was about to launch the British Magazine. Smollett was a com- 
plete schemer and speculator in literature, and intent upon enter- 
prises that had money rather than reputation in view. Goldsmith 
has a good-humored hit at this propensity in one of his papers in 
the Bee, in which he represents Johnson, Hume, and others tak- 
ing seats in the stage-coach bound for Fame, while Smollett 
prefers that destined for Riches. 

Another prominent employer of Goldsmith was Mr. John New- 
bery, who engaged him to contribute occasional essays to a news- 
paper entitled the Public Ledger, which made its first appearance 
on the 12th of January, 1760. His most valuable and character- 
istic contributions to this paper were his " Chinese Letters," 
subsequently modified into the Citizen of the World. These 
lucubrations attracted general attention ; they were reprinted in 
the various periodical publications of the day, and met with great 
applause. The name of the author, however, was as yet but little 
known. 

Being now easier in circumstances, and in the receipt of fre- 
quent sums from the booksellers. Goldsmith, about the middle of 
1760, emerged from his dismal abode in Green Arbor Court, and 
took respectable apartments in Wine-Office Court, Fleet Street. 

Still he continued to look back with considerate benevolence to 
the poor hostess, whose necessities he had relieved by pawning 
his gala coat, for we are told that " he often supj)lied her with 
food from his own table, and visited her frequently with the sole 
purpose to be kind to her." 

He now became a member of a debating club, called the Robin 
Hood, which used to meet near Temple Bar, and in which Burke, 
while yet a Temple student, had first tried his powers. Gold- 
smith sjDoke here occasionally, and is recorded in the Robin Hood 
archives as " a candid disputant with a clear head and an honest 
heart, though coming but seldom to the society." His relish was 
for clubs of a more social, jovial nature, and he was never fond of 
argument. An amusing anecdote is told of his first introduction 



PILEINGTON' S WHITE MICE. 93 

to the club, by Samuel Derrick, an Irish acquaintance of some 
humor. On entering, Goldsmith was struck with the self-impor- 
tant appearance of the chairman ensconced in a large gilt chair. 
"This," said he, "must be the Lord Chancellor at least." "No, 
no," replied Derrick, "he's only master of the rolls" — The 
chairman was a haker. 

CHAPTER XII. 

In his new lodgings in Wine-Office Court, Goldsmith began to 
receive visits of ceremony, and to entertain his literary friends. 
Among the latter he now numbered several names of note, such 
as Guthrie, Murphy, Christopher Smart, and Bickerstaff. He 
had also a numerous class of hangers-on, the small fry of litera- 
ture ; who, knowing his almost utter incapacity to refuse a pecun- 
iary request, were apt, now that he was considered flush, to levy 
continual taxes upon his purse. 

Among others, one Pilkington, an old college acquaintance, but 
now a shifting adventurer, duped him in the most ludicrous 
manner! He called on him with a face full of perplexity. A 
lady of the first rank having an extraordinary fancy for curious 
animals, for whicli she was willing to give enormous sums, he 
had procured a couple of white mice to be forwarded to her from 
India. They were actually on board of a ship in the river. Her 
grace had been apprised of their arrival, and was all impatience 
to see them. Unfortunately, he had no cage to put them in, nor 
clothes to appear in before a lady of her rank. Two guineas 
would be sufficient for his purpose, but where were two guineas 
to be procured ! 

The simple heart of Goldsmith was touched ; but, alas ! he had 
but half a guinea in his pocket. It was unfortunate, but, after a 
pause, his friend suggested, with some hesitation, "that money 
might be raised upon his watch : it would but be the loan of a 
few hours." So said, so done ; the watch was delivered to the 
worthy Mr. Pilkington to be pledged at a neighboring pawn- 



94 OLIVER GOLDSMITH, 

broker's, but nothing farther was ever seen of him, the watch, or 
the white mice. The next that Goldsmith heard of the poor 
shifting scapegrace, he was on his death-bed, starving with want, 
upon which, forgetting or forgiving the trick he had played upon 
him, he sent him a guinea. Indeed he used often to relate with 
great humor the foregoing anecdote of his credulity, and was 
ultimately in some degree indemnified by its suggesting to liim the 
amusing little story of Prince Bonbennin and the White Mouse in 
the Citizen of the World. 

In this year Goldsmith became personally acquainted with Dr. 
Johnson, toward whom he was drawn by strong sympathies, 
though their natures were widely different. Both had struggled 
from early life with poverty, but had struggled in different ways. 
Goldsmith, buoyant, heedless, sanguine, tolerant of evils, and 
easily pleased, had shifted along by any temporary expedient ; 
cast down at every turn, but rising again with indomitable 
good-humor, and still carried forward by his talent at 
hoping. Johnson, melancholy, and hypochondriacal, and prone to 
apprehend the worst, yet sternly resolute to battle with and 
conquer it, had made his way doggedly and gloomily, but with a 
noble principle of self-reliance and a disregard of foreign aid. 
Both had been irregular at college : Goldsmith, as we have shown, 
from the levity of his nature and his social and convivial habits ; 
Johnson, from his acerbity and gloom. When, in after-life, the latter 
heard himself spoken of as gay and frolicsome at college, because 
he had joined in some riotous excesses there, " Ah, sir ! " replied 
he, " I was mad and violent. It was bitterness which they mis- 
took for frolic. / was miserably poor, and I thought to fight my 
ivay by my literature and my wit. So I disregarded all power 
and all authority." 

Goldsmith's poverty was never accompanied by bitterness ; but 
neither was it accompanied by the guardian pride which kept 
Johnson from falling into the degrading shifts of poverty. Gold- 
smith had an unfortunate facility at borrowing, and helping him- 
self along by the contributions of his friends ; no doubt trusting, 



JOHNSON AND GAB RICK. 95 

in his hopeful way, of one day making retribution. Johnson 
never hoped, and therefore never borrowed. In his sternest trials 
he proudly bore the ills he could not master. In his youth, when 
some unknown friend, seeing his shoes completely worn out, left a 
new pair at his chamber-door, he disdained to accept the boon, 
and threw them away. 

Though hke Goldsmith an immethodical student, he had 
imbibed deeper draughts of knowledge, and made himself a riper 
scholar. While Goldsmith's happy constitution and genial 
humors carried him abroad into sunshine and enjoyment, Johnson's 
physical infirmities and mental gloom drove him upon himself ; to 
the resources of reading and meditation ; threw a deeper though 
darker enthusiasm into his mind, and stored a retentive memory 
with all kinds of knowledge. 

After several years of youth passed in the country as usher, 
teacher, and an occasional writer for the press, Johnson, when 
twenty-eight years of age, came up to London with a half- written 
tragedy in his pocket ; and David Garrick, late his pupil, and 
several years his junior, as a companion, both poor and penniless, 
— both, like Goldsmith, seeking their fortune in the metropolis. 
" We rode and tied," said Garrick sportively in after-years of 
prosperity, when he spoke of their humble wayfaring. " I came 
to London," said Johnson, " with twopence halfpenny in my 
pocket." — "Eh, what's that you say?" cried Garrick, "with 
twopence halfpenny in your pocket ? " " Why, yes : I came with 
twopence halfpenny in mi/ pocket, and thou, Davy, with but three 
halfpence in thine." Nor was there much exaggeration in the 
picture ; for so poor were they in purse and credit, that after 
their arrival they had, with difficulty, raised five pounds, by giving 
their joint note to a bookseller in the Strand. 

Many, many years had Johnson gone on obscurely in London, 
"fighting his way by his literature and his wit;" enduring all 
the hardships and miseries of a Grub-Street writer : so destitute 
at one time, that he and Savage the poet had walked all night 
about St. James's Square, both too poor to pay for a night's lodg- , 



96 OLIVIER GOLDSMITH. 

ing, yet both full of poetry aud patriotism, and determined to 
stand by their country ; so shabby in dress at another time, that, 
when he dined at Cave's, his bookseller, when there was prosper- 
ous company, he could not make his appearance at table, but had 
his dinner handed to him behind a screen. 

Yet through all the long and dreary struggle, often diseased in 
mind as well as in body, he had been resolutely self-dependent, 
and proudly self-respectful; he had fulfilled his college vow, he 
had "fought his way by his literature and wit." His Ramhler 
and Idler had made him the great moralist of the age, and his 
Dictionary and History of the English Language, that stupen- 
dous monument of individual labor, had excited the admiration of 
the learned world. He was now at the head of intellectual 
society ; and had become as distinguished by his conversational as 
his literary powers. He had become as much an autocrat in his 
sphere as his fellow-wayfarer and adventurer Garrick had become 
of the stage, and had been humorously dubbed by Smollett, " The 
Great Cham of Literature." 

Such was Dr. Johnson, when on the 31st of May, 1761, he 
was to make his appearance as a guest at a literary supper given 
by Goldsmith to a numerous party at his new lodgings in Wine- 
Office Court. It was the opening of their acquaintance. John- 
son had felt and acknowledged the merit of Goldsmith as an 
author, and been pleased by the honorable mention made of him- 
self in the Bee and the " Chinese Letters." Dr. Percy called upon 
Johnson to take him to Goldsmith's lodgings ; he found Johnson 
arrayed with unusual care in a new suit of clothes, a new hat, and 
a well-powdered wig ; and could not but notice his uncommon 
spruceness. "Why, sir," replied Johnson, "I hear that Gold- 
smith, who is a very great sloven, justifies his disregard of cleanli- 
ness and decency by quoting my practice, and I am desirous this 
night to show him a better example." 

The acquaintance thus commenced ripened into intimacy in the 
course of frequent meetings in the shop of Davies, the bookseller, 
in Russell Street, Covent Garden. As this was one of the great 



DAVIE S AND HIS BOOKSHOP. 97 

literary gossiping-places of the day, especially to the circle over 
which Johnson presided, it is worthy of some specification. Mr. 
Thomas Davies, noted in after-times as the biographer of Garrick, 
had originally been on the stage, and though a small man, had 
enacted tyrannical tragedy with a pomp and magniloquence 
beyond his size, if we may trust the description given of him by 
Churchill in the Rosciad : — 

" Statesman all over — in plots famous grown, 
He mouths a sentence as curs mouth a bone.''^ 

This unlucky sentence is said to have crippled him in the midst of 
his tragic career, and ultimately to have driven him from the 
stage. He carried into the bookselling craft somewhat of the 
grandiose manner of the stage, and was prone to be mouthy and 
magniloquent. 

Churchill had intimated, that while on the stage he was more 
noted for his pretty wife than his good acting : 

" With him came mighty Davies ; on my life. 
That fellow has a very pretty wife." 

" Pretty Mrs. Davies " continued to be the load-star of his 
fortunes. Her tea-table became almost as much a literary lounge 
as her husband's shop. She found favor in the eyes of the Ursa 
Major of literature by her winning ways, as she poured out for him 
cups without stint of his favorite beverage. Indeed it is sug- 
gested that she was one leading cause of his habitual resort to 
this literary haunt. Others were drawn thither for the sake of 
Johnson's conversation, and thus it became a resort of many of the 
notorieties of the day. Here might occasionally be seen Bennet 
Langton, George Steevens, Dr. Percy, celebrated for his ancient 
ballads, and sometimes Warburton in prelatic state. Garrick 
resorted to it for a time, but soon grew shy and suspicious, declar- 
ing that most of the authors who frequented Mr. Davies's shop 
went merely to abuse him. 

Foote, the Aristophanes of the day, was a frequent visitor ; his 
broad face beaming with fun and waggery, and his satirical eye 



98 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

ever on the lookout for characters and incidents for his farces. 
He was struck with the odd habits and appearance of Johnson 
and Goldsmith, now so often brought together in Davies's shop. 
He was about to put on the stage a farce called The Orator's, in- 
tended as a hit at the Robin Hood debating-club, and resolved to 
show up the two doctors in it for the entertainment of the town. 

"What is the common price of an oak stick, sir?" said Johnson 
to Davies. " Sixpence," was the reply. " Why then, sir, give me 
leave to send your serv^ant to purchase a shilling one. I'll have 
a double quantity, for I am told Foote means to take me off as 
he calls it, and I am determined the fellow shall not do it with 
impunity." 

Foote had no disposition to undergo the criticism of the cudgel 
wielded by such potent hands, so the farce of The Orators ap- 
peared without the caricatures of the lexicographer and the 
essayist. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

Notwithstanding- his growing success. Goldsmith continued 
to consider literature a mere makeshift, and his vagrant imagina- 
tion teemed with schemes and plans of a grand but indefinite na- 
ture. One was for visiting the East and exploring the interior of 
Asia. He had, as has been before observed, a vague notion that 
valuable discoveries were to be made there, and many useful in- 
ventions in the arts brought back to the stock of European knowl- 
edge. "Thus, in Siberian Tartary," observed he, in one of his 
writings, " the natives extract a strong spirit from milk, which is 
a secret probably unknown to the chemists of Europe. In the 
most savage parts of India they are possessed of the secret of dye- 
ing vegetable substances scarlet, and that of refining lead into 
a metal which, for hardness and color, is little inferior to silver." 

Goldsmith adds a description of the kind of person suited to 
such an enterprise, in which he evidently had himself in view. 



LITERARY JOBS. ' 99 

" He should be a man of philosophical turn, one apt to deduce eon- 
sequences of general utility from particular occurrences ; neither 
swoln with pride, nor hardened by prejudice ; neither wedded to one 
particular system, nor instructed only in one particular science ; 
neither wholly a botanist, nor quite an antiquarian ; his mind should 
be tinctured with miscellaneous knowledge, and his manners human- 
ized by an intercourse with men. He should be in some measure an 
enthusiast to the design ; fond of travelling, from a rapid imagination 
and an innate love of change ; furnished with a body capable of sus- 
taining every fatigue, and a heart not easily terrified at danger." 

In 1761, when Lord Bute became prime minister on the ac- 
cession of George the Third, Goldsmith drew up a memorial on 
the subject, suggesting the advantages to be derived from a mis- 
sion to those countries solely for useful and scientific purposes ; 
and, the better to insure success, he preceded his application to 
the government by an ingenious essay to the same effect in the 
J^uhlic Ledger. 

His memorial and his essay were fruitless, his project most 
probably being deemed the dream of a visionary. Still it contin- 
ued to haunt his mind, and he would often talk of making an 
expedition to Aleppo some time or other, when his means were 
greater, to inquire into the arts peculiar to the East, and to bring 
home such as might be valuable. Johnson, who knew how little 
poor Goldsmith was fitted by scientific lore for this favorite 
scheme of his fancy, scoffed at the project when it was mentioned 
to him. " Of all men," said he, " Goldsmith is the most unfit to 
go out upon such an inquiry, for he is utterly ignorant of such arts 
as we already possess, and, consequently, could not know what would 
be accessions to our present stock of mechanical knowledge. Sir, he 
would bring home a grinding-barrow, which you see in every street in 
London, and think that he had furnished a wonderful improvement." 

His connection with JSTewbery the bookseller now - led him into 
a variety of temporary jobs, such as a pamphlet on the Cock- 
Lane Ghost, a Life of Beau E"ash, the famous Master of Ceremo- 
nies at Bath, etc. : one of the best things for his fame, however, 
was the remodelling and republication of his " Chinese Letters " 



100 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

under the title of The Citizen of the World, a work which has 
long since taken its merited stand among the classics of the Eng- 
lish language. " Few works," it has been observed by one of his 
biographers, "exhibit a nicer perception, or more delicate delinea- 
tion of life and manners. Wit, humor, and sentiment pervade 
every page ; the vices and follies of the day are touched with the 
most playful and diverting satire ; and English characteristics, in 
endless variety, are hit off with the pencil of a master." 

In seeking materials for his varied views of life, he often 
mingled in strange scenes and got involved in whimsical situations. 
In the summer of 1762 he was one of the thousands who went to 
see the Cherokee chiefs, whom he mentions in one of his writings. 
The Indians made their appearance in grand costume, hideously 
painted and besmeared. In the course of the visit Goldsmith 
made one of the chiefs a present, who, in the ecstasy of his grati- 
tude, gave him an embrace that left his face well bedaubed with 
oil and red ochre. 

Towards the close of 1762 he removed to "merry Islington," 
then a country village, though now swallowed up in omnivorous 
London. He went there 'for the benefit of country air, his health 
being injured by literary application and confinement, and to be 
near his chief employer, Mr. Newbery, who resided in the Can- 
onbury House. In this neighborhood he used to take his solitary 
rambles, sometimes extending his walks to the gardens of the 
" White Conduit House," so famous among the essayists of the 
last century. While strolling one day in these gardens, he met 
three females of the family of a respectable tradesman to whom 
he was under some obligation. With his prompt disposition to 
oblige, he conducted them about the garden, treated them to tea, 
and ran up a bill in the most open-handed manner imaginable ; 
it was only when he came to pay that he found himself in one 
of his old dilemmas — he had not the wherewithal in his pocket. 
A scene of perplexity now took place between him and the waiter, 
in the midst of which came up some of his acquaintances, in whose 
eyes he wished to stand particularly well. This completed his 



LETTERS ON THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 101 

mortification. There was no concealing the awkwardness of his 
position. The sneers of the waiter revealed it. His acquaintances 
amused themselves for some time at his expense, professing their 
inability to relieve him. When, however, they had enjoyed their 
banter, the waiter was paid, and poor Goldsmith enabled to con- 
voy off the ladies with flying colors. 

Among the various productions thrown off by him for the 
booksellers during this growing period of his reputation, was a 
small work in two volumes, entitled The History of England, in 
a Series of Letters from a Nobleman to his Son. It w^as 
digested from Hume, Eapin, Carte, and Kennet. These authors 
he would read in the morning ; make a few notes ; ramble with a 
friend into the country about the skirts of " merry Islington " ; 
return to a temperate dinner and cheerful evening ; and, before 
going to bed, write off what had arranged itself in his head from 
the studies of the morning. In this way he took a more general 
view of the subject, and wrote in a more free and fluent style than 
if he had been mousing at the time among authorities. The work, 
like many others written by him in the earlier part of his literary 
career, was anonymous. Some attributed it to Lord Chesterfield, 
others to Lord Orrery, and others to Lord Lytteltbn. The latter 
seemed pleased to be the putative father, and never disowned the 
bantling thus laid at his door; and well might he have been proud 
to be considered capable of producing what has been well-pro- 
nounced " the most finished and elegant summary of English 
history in the same compass that has been or is likely to be 
written." 

The reputation of Goldsmith, it will be perceived, grew slowly ; 
he was known and estimated by a few; but he had not those 
brilliant though fallacious qualities which flash upon the public, 
and excite loud but transient applause. His works were more 
read than cited ; and the charm of style, for which he was espe- 
cially noted, was more apt to be felt than talked about. He used 
often to repine, in a half humorous, half querulous manner, at his 
tardiness in gaining the laurels which he felt to be his due. " The 



102 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

public," he would exclaim, "will never do me justice; whenever I 
write anything, they make a point to know nothing about it." 

About the beginning of 1763 he became acquainted with Bos- 
well, whose literary gossipings were destined to have a deleterious 
effect upon his reputation. Boswell was at that time a young 
man, light, buoyant, pushing, and presumptuous. He had a mor- 
bid passion for mingling in the society of men noted for wit and 
learning, and had just arrived from Scotland, bent upon making 
his way into the literary circles of the metropolis. An intimacy 
with Dr. Johnson, the great literary luminary of the day, was the 
crowning object of his aspiring and somewhat ludicrous ambition. 
He expected to meet him at a dinner to which he was invited at 
Davies the bookseller's, but was disappointed. Goldsmith was 
present, but he was not as yet sufficiently renowned to excite the 
reverence of Boswell. "At this time," says he in his Notes, "I 
think he had published nothing with his name, though it was 
pretty generally understood that one Dr. Goldsmith was the 
author of An Inquiry/ into the Present State of Polite Learning 
in Europe, and of The Citizen of the World, a series of letters 
supposed to be written from London by a Chinese." 

A conversation took place at table between Goldsmith and Mr. 
Robert Dodsley, compiler of the well-known collection of modern 
poetry, as to the merits of the current poetry of the day. Gold- 
smith declared there was none of superior merit. Dodsley cited 
his own collection in proof of the contrary. "It is true," said he, 
"we can boast of no palaces nowadays, like Dryden's Ode to St. 
Cecilia's Bay, but we have villages composed of very pretty 
houses." Goldsmith, however, maintained that there was nothing 
above mediocrity, an opinion in which Johnson, to whom it was 
repeated, concurred, and with reason, for the era was one of the 
dead levels of British poetry. 

Boswell has made no note of this conversation ; he was an uni- 
tarian in his literary devotion, and disposed to worship none but 
Johnson. Little Davies endeavored to console him for his dis- 
appointment, and to stay the stomach of his curiosity, by giving 



JAMES BOSWELL. - 103 

him imitations of the great lexicographer; mouthing his words, 
rolling his head, and assuming as ponderous a manner as his petty 
person would permit. Bos well was shortly afterwards made 
happy by an introduction to Johnson, of whom he became the 
obsequious satellite. From him he likewise imbibed a more favor- 
able opinion of Goldsmith's merits, though he was fain to consider 
them derived in a great nieasure from his Magnus Apollo. " He 
had sagacity enough," says he, "to cultivate assiduously the ac- 
quaintance of Johnson, and his faculties were gradually enlarged 
by the contemplation of such a model. To me and many others it 
appeared that he studiously copied the manner of Johnson, 
though, indeed, upon a smaller scale." So on another occasion 
he calls him "one of the brightest ornaments of the Johnsonian 
school." "His respectful attachment to Johnson," adds he, "was 
then at its height ; for his own literary reputation had not yet 
distinguished him so much as to excite a vain desire of competi- 
tion with his great master." 

What beautiful instances does the garrulous Boswell give of the 
goodness of heart of Johnson, and the passing homage to it by 
Goldsmith. They were speaking of a Mr. Levett, long an inmate 
of Johnson's house and a dependent on his bounty ; but who, Bos- 
well thought, must be an irksome charge upon him. " He is poor 
and honest," said Goldsmith, " which is recommendation enough to 
Johnson." 

Boswell mentioned another person of a very bad character, and 
wondered at Johnson's kindness to him. "He is now become 
miserable," said Goldsmith, "and that insures the protection of 
Johnson." Encomiums like these speak almost as much for the 
heart of him who praises as of him who is praised. 

Subsequently, when Boswell had become more intense in his 
literary idolatry, he affected to undervalue Goldsmith, and a lurk- 
ing hostility to him is discernible throughout his writings, which 
some have attributed to a silly spirit of jealousy of the superior 
esteem evinced for the poet by Dr. Johnson. We have a gleam of 
this in his account of the first evening he spent in company with 



104 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

those two eminent authors at their famous resort, the Mitre 
Tavern, in Fleet Street. This took place on the 1st of July, 
1763. The trio supped together, and passed some time in lit- 
erary conversation. On quitting the tavern, Johnson, who had 
now been sociably acquainted with Goldsmith for two years, and 
knew his merits, took him with him to drink tea with his blind 
pensioner, Miss Williams, — a high privilege among his intimates 
and admirers. To Boswell, a recent acquaintance, whose in- 
trusive sycophancy had not yet made its way into his confiden- 
tial intimacy, he gave no invitation. Boswell felt it with all 
the jealousy of a little mind. "Dr. Groldsmith," says he, in 
his Memoirs, "being a privileged man, went with him, strut- 
ting away, and calling to me with an air of superiority, like 
that of an esoteric over an exoteric disciple of a sage of antiquity, 
' I go to Miss Williams.' I confess I then envied him this mighty 
privilege, of which he seemed to be so proud ; but it was not long 
before I obtained the same mark of distinction." 

Obtained ! but how ? not like Ooldsmith, by the force of unpre- 
tending but congenial merit, but by a course of the most pushing, 
contriving, and spaniel-like subserviency. Really, the ambition 
of the man to illustrate his mental insignificance, by continually 
placing himself in juxtaposition with the great lexicographer, has 
something in it perfectly ludicrous. jSTever, since the days of Don 
Quixote and Sancho Panza, has there been presented to the world 
a more whimsically contrasted pair of associates than Johnson and 
Boswell. 

" Who is this Scotch cur at Johnson's heels 1 " asked som^e one 
when Boswell had worked his way into incessant companionship. 
"He is not a cur," replied Goldsmith, "you are too severe; he is 
only a bur. Tom Davies flung him at Johnson in sport, and he 
has the faculty of sticking." 



HOGARTH. 105 



CHAPTER XIV. 

Among the intimates who used to visit the poet occasionally 
in his retreat at Islington, was Hogarth the painter. Goldsmith 
had spoken well of him in his essays in the Public Ledger, and 
this formed the first link in their friendship. He was at this 
time upwards of sixty years of age, and is described as a stout, 
active, bustling little man, in a sky-blue coat, satirical and dog- 
matic, yet full of real benevolence and the love of human nature. 
He was the moralist and philosopher of the pencil; like Gold- 
smith he had sounded the depths of vice and misery, without 
being polluted by them ; and though his picturings had not the 
pervading amenity of those of the essayist, and dwelt more on the 
crimes and vices than the follies and humors of mankind, yet they 
were all calculated, in like manner, to fill the mind with instruc- 
tion and precept, and to make the heart better. 

Hogarth does not appear to have had much of the rural feeling 
with which Goldsmith was so amply endowed, and may not have 
accompanied him- in his strolls about hedges and green lanes j but 
he was a fit companion with whom to explore the mazes of 
London, in which he was continually on the lookout for character 
and incident. One of Hogarth's admirers speaks of having come 
upon him in Castle Street, engaged in one of his street-studies, 
watching two boys who were quarrelling ; jDatting one on the 
back who flinched, and efldeavoring to spirit him up to a fresh 

encounter. " At him again ! D him, if I would take it 

of him ! At him again ! " 

A frail memorial of this intimacy between the painter and the 
poet exists in a portrait in oil, called "Goldsmith's Hostess." It 
is supposed to have been painted by Hogarth in the course of his 
visits to Islington, and given by him to the poet as a means of 
paying his landlady. There are no friendships among men of 
talents more likely to be sincere than those between painters and 
poets. Possessed of the same qualities of mind, governed by the 



106 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

same principles of taste and natural laws of grace and beauty, but 
applying them to different yet mutually illustrative arts, they are 
constantly in sympathy, and never in collision with each other. 

A still more congenial intimacy of the kind was that contracted 
by Goldsmith with Mr. (afterwards Sir Joshua) Reynolds. The 
latter was now about forty years of age, a few years older than 
the poet, whom he charmed by the blandness and benignity of his 
manners, and the nobleness and generosity of his disposition, as 
much as he did by the graces of his pencil and the magic of his 
coloring. They were men of kindred genius, excelling in corre- 
sponding qualities of their several arts, for style in writing is 
what color is in painting; both are innate endowments, and 
equally magical in their effects. Certain graces and harmonies 
of both may be acquired by diligent study and imitation, but only 
in a limited degree ; whereas by their natural possessors they are 
exercised spontaneously, almost unconsciously, and with ever-vary- 
ing fascination. Reynolds soon understood and appreciated the 
merits of Goldsmith, and a sincere and lasting friendship ensued 
between them. 

At Reynolds's house Goldsmith mingled in a higher range of 
company than he had been accustomed to.- The fame of this 
celebrated artist, and his amenity of manners, were gathering 
round him men of talents of all kinds, and the increasing affluence 
of his circumstances enabled him to give full indulgence to his 
hospitable disposition. Poor Goldsmith had not yet, like Dr. 
Johnson, acquired reputation enough to* atone for his external de- 
fects and his want of the air of good society. Miss Reynolds used 
to inveigh against his personal appearance, which gave her the 
idea, she said, of a low mechanic, a journeyman tailor. One even- 
ing at a large supper-party, being called upon to give as a toast 
the ugliest man she knew, she gave Dr. Goldsmith, upon which a 
lady who sat opposite, and whom she had never met before, shook 
hands ^\dth her across the table, and " hoped to become better 
acquainted." 

We have a graphic and amusing picture of Reynolds's hospi- 



SIB JOSHUA REYNOLDS. 107 

table but motley establishment, in an account given by a Mr. 
Courtenay to Sir James Mackintosh ; though it speaks of a time 
after Reynolds had received the honor of knighthood. " There 
was something singular," said he, " in the style and economy of 
Sir Joshua's table that contributed to pleasantry and good-humor, 
— a coarse, inelegant plenty, without any regard to order and 
arrangement. At five o'clock precisely, dinner was served, whether 
all the invited guests had arrived or not. Sir Joshua was never 
so fashionably ill-bred as to wait an hour perhaps for two or three- 
persons of rank or title, and put the rest of the company out of 
humor by this invidious distinction. His invitations, however, 
did not regulate the number of his guests. Many dropped in 
uninvited. A table prepared for seven or eight was often com- 
pelled to contain fifteen or sixteen. There was a consequent 
deficiency of knives, forks, plates, and glasses. The attendance 
was in the same style, and those who were knowing in the ways 
of the house took care on sitting down to call instantly for beer, 
bread, or wine, that they might secure a supply before the first 
course was over. He was once prevailed on to furnish the table 
with decanters and glasses at dinner, to save time and prevent 
confusion. These gradually were demolished in the course of 
service, and were never replaced. These trifling embarrassments, 
however, only served to enhance the hilarity and singular pleasure 
of the entertainment. The wine, cookery, and dishes were but 
little attended to ; nor was the fish or venison ever talked of or 
recommended. Amidst this convivial animated bustle among his 
guests, our host sat perfectly composed; always attentive to 
what was said, never minding what was ate or drank, but left 
every one at perfect liberty to scramble for himself." 

Out of the casual but frequent meeting of men of talent at this 
hospitable board rose that association of wits, authors, scholars, 
and statesmen, renowned as the Literary Club. Reynolds was 
the first to propose a regular association of the kind, and was 
eagerly seconded by Johnson, who proposed as a model a club 
which he had formed many years previously in Ivy-Lane, but 



108 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

which was now extinct. Like that club the number of members 
was limited to nine. They were to meet and sup together onco 
a week, on Monday night, at the Turk's Head on Gerard Street, 
Soho, and two members were to constitute a meeting. It took a 
regular form in the year 1764, but did not receive its literary 
appellation until several years afterwards. 

The original members were Reynolds, Johnson, Burke, Dr. 
JSTugent, Bennet Langton, Topham Beauclerc, Cliamier, Hawkins, 
and Goldsmith ; and here a few words concerning some of the 
members may be acceptable. Burke was at that time about 
thirty-three years of age ; he had mingled a little in politics and 
been Under-Secretary to Hamilton at Dublin, but was again a 
writer for the booksellers, and as yet but in the dawning of his 
fame. Dr. Xugent was his father-in-law, a Roman Catholic, and 
a physician of talent and instruction. Mr. (afterwards Sir John) 
Hawkins was admitted into this association from having been a 
member of Johnson's Ivy-Lane club. Originally an attorney, he 
had retired from the practice of the law, in consequence of a large 
fortune which fell to him in right of his wife, and was now a 
Middlesex magistrate. He was, moreover, a dabbler in literature 
and music, and was actually engaged on a history of music, which 
he subsequently published in five ponderous volumes. To him 
we are also indebted for a biography of Johnson, which appeared 
after the death of that eminent man. Hawkins was as mean and 
parsimonious as he was pompous and conceited. He forbore to 
partake of the suppers at the club, and begged therefore to be 
excused from paying his share of the reckoning. "And was he 
excused?" asked Dr. Burney of Johnson. "Oh, yes, -for no man 
is angry with another for being inferior to himself. We all 
scorned him and admitted his plea. Yet I really believe him to 
be an honest man at bottom, though to be sure he is penurious, 
and he is mean, and it must be owned he has a tendency to 
savageness." He did not remain above two or three years in the 
club ; being in a manner elbowed out in consequence of his 
rudeness to Burke. 



LANGTON AND BEAUCLEEC. 109 

Mr. Anthony Chamier was Secretary in the war-office, and a 
friend to Beauclerc, by whom he w^as proposed. We have left 
our mention of Bennet Langton and Topham Beauclerc until the 
last, because we have most to say about them. They were doubt- 
less induced to join the club through their devotion to Johnson, 
and the intimacy of these two very young and aristocratic men 
with the stern and somewhat melancholy moralist is among the 
curiosities of literature. 

Bennet Langton was of an ancient family, who held their 
ancestral estate of Langton in Lincolnshire, — a great title to 
respect with Johnson. " Langton, sir," he would say, " has a 
grant of free-warren from Henry the Second; and Cardinal 
Stephen Langton, in King John's reign, was of this family." 

Langton was of a mild, contemplative, enthusiastic nature. 
When but eighteen years of age he was so delighted with reading 
Johnson's Bamhler, tla.B,t he came to Loudon chiefly with a view 
to obtain an introduction to the author. Bosw^ell gives us an 
account of his first interview, which took place in the morning. 
It is not often that the personal appearance of an author agrees 
with the preconceived ideas of his admirer. Langton, from perus- 
ing the writings of Johnson, expected to find him a decent, 
well-dressed, in short a remarkably decorous philosopher. Instead 
of which, down from his bedchamber about noon, came, as newly 
risen, a large uncouth figure, with a little dark wig which 
scarcely covered his head, and his clothes hanging loose about 
him. But his conversation was so rich, so animated, and so 
forcible, and his religious and political notions so congenial with 
those in which Langton had been educated, that he conceived 
for him that veneration and attachment which he ever pre- 
served. 

Langton went to pursue his studies at Trinity College, Oxford, 
where Johnson saw much of him during a visit which he paid to 
the University. He found him in close intimacy with Topham 
Beauclerc, a youth two years older than himself, very gay and dis- 
sipated, and wondered what sympathies could draw two young 



110 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

men together of such opposite characters. On becoming ac- 
quainted with Beauclerc he found that, rake though he was, he 
possessed an ardent love of literature, an acute understanding, 
polished wit, innate gentility, and high aristocratic breeding. He 
was, moreover, the only son of Lord Sidney Beauclera and grand- 
son of the Duke of St. Albans, and was thought in some particu- 
lars to have a resemblance to Charles the Second. These were 
high recommendations with Johnson ; and when the youth testified 
a profound respect for him and an ardent admiration of his talents, 
the conquest was complete, so that in a "short time," says Bos- 
well, "the moral pious Johnson and the gay dissipated Beauclerc 
were companions." 

The intimacy begun in college chambers was continued when 
the youths came to town during the vacations. The uncouth, un- 
wieldy moralist was flattered at finding himself an object of idol- 
atry to two high-born, high-bred, aristocratic young men, and 
throwing gravity aside, was ready to join in their vagaries and 
play the part of a "young man upon town." Such, at least is the 
picture given of him by Boswell on one occasion when Beauclerc 
and Langton, having supped together at a tavern, determined 
to give Johnson a rouse at three o'clock in the morning. They 
accordingly rapped violently at the door of his chambers in the 
Temple. The indignant sage sallied forth in his shirt, poker in 
hand, and a little black wig on the top of his head, instead of hel- 
met ; prepared to wreak vengeance on the assailants of his castle ; 
but when his two young friends Lanky and Beau, as he "used to 
call them, presented themselves, summoning him forth to a morn- 
ing ramble, his whole manner changed. " What, is it you, ye 
dogs 1 " cried he. " Faith, I'll have a frisk with you ! " 

So said so done. They sallied forth together into Covent Gar- 
den ; figured among the green-grocers and fruit-women, just come 
in from the country with their hampers ; repaired to a neighbor- 
ing tavern, where Johnson brewed a bowl of bishop, a favorite 
beverage with him, grew merry over his cups, and anathematized 
sleep in two lines, from Lord Lansdowne's drinking song : — 



FROLICS. Ill 

" Short, very short, be then thy reign, 
For I'm in haste to laugli and drink again." 

They then took boat again, rowed to Billingsgate, and Johnson 
and Beauclerc determined, like "mad wags," to "keep it up" for 
the rest of the day. Langton, however, the most sober-minded of 
the three, pleaded an engagement to breakfast with some young 
ladies ; whereupon the great moralist reproached him with " leav- 
ing his social friends to go and sit with a set of wretched un-idea'd 
girls." 

This madcap freak of the great lexicographer made a sensation, 
as may well be supposed, among his intimates. " I heard of your 
frolic t'other night," said Garrick to him ; " you'll be in the Chron- 
icle.^^ He uttered worse forebodings to others, "I shall have my 
old friend to bail out of the round-house," said he. Johnson, 
however, valued himself upon having thus enacted a chapter in the 
"Rake's Progress," and crowed over Garrick on the occasion. 
" He durst not do such a thing ! " chuckled he ; " his wife would 
not let him ! " 

When these two young men entered the club, Langton was 
about twenty-two, and Beaaclerc about twenty-four years of age, 
and both were launched on London life. Langton, however, was 
still the mild, enthusiastic scholar, steeped to the lips in Greek, 
with fine conversational powers, and an invaluable talent for lis- 
tening. He was upwards of six feet high, and very spare. " Oh ! 
that we could sketch him," exclaims Miss Hawkins, in her Me- 
moirs, "with his mild countenance, his elegant features, and his 
sweet smile, sitting with one leg twisted round the other, as if 
fearing to occupy more space than was equitable ; his person 
inclining forward, as if wanting strength to support his weight, 
and his arms crossed over his bosom, or his hands locked together 
on his knee." Beauclerc, on such occasions, sportively compared 
him to a stork in Raphael's Cartoons, standing on one leg. Beau- 
clerc was more a " man upon town," a lounger in St. James's 
Street, an associate with George Selwyn, with Walpole, and other 
aristocratic wits ; a man of fashion at court ; a casual frequenter 



112 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

of the gaming-table; yet, with all this, he alternated in the 
easiest and happiest manner the scholar and the man of letters ; 
lounged into the club with the most perfect self-possession, bring- 
ing with him the careless grace and polished wit of high-bred soci- 
ety, but making himself cordially at home among his learned 
fellow-members. 

The gay yet lettered rake maintained his sway over Johnson, 
who was fascinated by that air of the world, that ineffable tone of 
good society in which he felt himself deficient, especially as the 
possessor of it always paid homage to his superior talent. " Beau- 
clerc," he would say, using a quotation from Pope, " has a love of 
folly, but a scorn of fools ; everything he does shows the one, and 
everything he says, the other." Beauclerc delighted in rallying 
the stern moralist of whom others stood in awe, and no one, ac- 
cording to Boswell, could take equal liberty with him. with impu- 
nity. Johnson, it is well known, was often shabby and negligent 
in his dress, and not over-cleanly in his person. On receiving a 
pension from the crown, his friends vied with each other in respect- 
ful congratulations. Beauclerc simply scanned his person with a 
whimsical glance, and hoped that, like Falstaff, " he'd in future 
purge and live cleanly like a gentleman." Johnson took the hint 
with unexpected good-humor, and profited by it. 

Still Beauclerc's satirical vein, which darted shafts on every 
side, was not always tolerated by Johnson. " Sir," said he on one 
occasion, "you never open your mouth but with intention to give 
pain ; and you have often given me pain, not from the power of 
what you have said, but from seeing your intention." 

When it was at first proposed to enroll Goldsmith among the 
members of this association, there seems to have been some 
demur; at least so says the pompous Hawkins. "As he wrote 
for the booksellers we of the club looked on him as a mere literary 
drudge, equal to the task of compiling and translating, but little 
capable of original and still less of poetical composition." 

Even for some time after his admission he continued to be 
regarded in a dubious light by some of the members. Johnson 



JOHNSON A MONITOR. 113 

and Reynolds, of course, were well aware of his merits, nor was 
Burke a stranger to them; but to the others he was as yet a 
sealed book, and the outside was not prepossessing. His ungainly 
person and awkward manners were against him with men accus- 
tomed to the graces of society, and he was not sufficiently at home 
to give play to his humor and to that bonhomie which won the 
hearts of all who knew him. He felt strange and out of place in 
this new sphere ; he felt at times the cool satirical eye of the 
courtly Beauclerc scanning him, and the more he attempted to 
appear at his ease, the more awkward he became. 



CHAPTER XV. 

Johnson had now become one of Goldsmith's best friends and 
advisers. He knew all the weak points of his character, but he 
knew also his merits ; and while he would rebuke him like a 
child, and rail at his errors and follies, he would suffer no one else 
to undervalue him. Goldsmith knew the soundness of his judg- 
ment and his practical benevolence, and often sought his counsel 
and aid amid the difficulties into which his heedlessness was con- 
tinually plunging him. 

" I received one morning," says Johnson, " a message from poor 
Goldsmith that he was in great distress, and, as it was not in his 
power to come to me, begging that I would come to him as soon 
as possible. I sent him a guinea, and promised to come to him 
directly. I accordingly went as soon as I was dressed, and found 
that his landlady had arrested him for his rent, at which he was 
in a violent passion : I perceived that he had already changed 
my guinea, and had a bottle of Madeira and a glass before him. 
I put the cork into the bottle, desired he would be calm, and began 
to talk to him of the means by which he might be extricated. 
He then told me he had a novel ready for the press, which he pro- 
duced to me. I looked into it and saw its merit ; told the land- 



114 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

lady I should soon return ; and, having gone to a bookseller, sold 
it for sixty pounds. I brought Goldsmith the money, and he dis- 
charged his rent, not without rating his landlady in a high tone 
for having used him so ill." 

The novel in question was the Vicar of Wakefield ; the book- 
seller to whom Johnson sold it w^as Francis Newbery, nephew to 
John. Strange as it may seem, this captivating work, which has 
obtained and preserved an almost unrivalled popularity in various 
languages, was so little appreciated by the bookseller, that he 
kept it by him for nearly two years unpublished ! 

Goldsmith had, as yet, produced nothing of moment in poetry. 
Among his literary jobs, it is true, was an Oratorio entitled The 
Captivity, founded on the bondage of the Israelites in Babylon. 
It was one of those unhappy offsprings of the Muse ushered into 
existence amid the distortions of music. Most of the Oratorio has 
passed into oblivion ; but the following soug from it will never 
die. 

" The wretch condemned from life to part, 
Still, still on hope relies, 
And every pang that rends the heart 
Bids expectation rise. 

*' Hope, like the glimmering taper's light, 
Illumes and cheers our way ; 
And still, as darker grows the night, 
Emits a brighter ray." 

Goldsmith distrusted his qualifications to succeed in poetry, and 
doubted the disposition of the public mind in regard to it. "I 
fear," said he, "I have come too late into the world ; Pope and 
other poets have taken up the places in the temple of Fame ; and 
as few at any period can possess poetical reputation; a man of 
genius can now hardly acquire it." Again, on another occasion, 
he observes : "Of all kinds of ambition, as things are now circum- 
stanced, perhaps that which pursues poetical fame is the wildest. 
What from the increased refinement of the times, from the diver- 
sity of judgment produced by opposing systems of criticism, and 



" THE TEAVELLER.'' 115 

from the more prevalent divisions of opinion influenced by party, 
the strongest and happiest efforts can expect to please but in a 
very narrow circle." 

At this very time he had by him his poem of The Traveller. 
The plan of it, as has already been observed, was conceived many 
years before, during his travels in Switzerland, and a sketch of it 
sent from that country to his brother Henry in Ireland. The 
original outline is said to have embraced a wider scope ; but it 
was probably contracted through diffidence, in the process of fin- 
ishing the parts. It had laid by him for several years in a crude 
state, and it was with extreme hesitation and after much revision 
that he at length submitted it to Dr. Johnson. The frank and 
warm approbation of the latter encouraged him to finish it for the 
press ; and Dr. Johnson himself contributed a few lines towards the 
conclusion. 

We hear much about " poetic inspiration," and the " poet's eye 
in a fine phrensy rolling ; " but Sir Joshua Reynolds gives an 
anecdote of Groldsmith while engaged upon his poem, calculated to 
cure our notions about the ardor of composition. Calling upon 
the poet one day, he opened the door without ceremony, and found 
him in the double occupation of turning a couplet and teaching a 
pet dog to sit upon his haunches. At one time he would glance 
his eye at his desk, and at another shake his finger at the dog to 
make him retain his position. The last lines on the page were 
still wet ; they form a part of the description of Italy : — 

" By sports like these are all their cares beguiled, 
The sports of children satisfy the child." 

Goldsmith, with his usual good-humor, "joined in the laugh caused 
by his whimsical employment, and acknowledged that his boyish 
sport with the dog suggested the stanza. 

The poem was published on the 19th of December, 1764, in a 
quarto form, by Newbery, and was the first of his works to which 
Goldsmith prefixed his name. As a testimony of cherished and 
well-merited affection, he dedicated it to his brother Henry. There 



116 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

is an amusing affectation of indifference as to its fate expressed in 
the dedication. "What reception a poem may find," says he, 
"which has neither abuse, party, nor blank verse to support it, I 
cannot tell, nor am I solicitous to know." The truth is, no one 
was more emulous and anxious for poetic fame ; and never was he 
more anxious than in the present instance, for it was his grand 
stake. Mr. Johnson aided the launching of the poem by a favor- 
able notice in the Critical Review ; other periodical works came 
out in its favor. Some of the author's friends complained that it 
did not command instant and wide popularity ; that it was a 
poem to win, not to strike : it went on rapidly increasing in favor; 
in three months a second edition was issued ; shortly afterwards, a 
third ; then a fourth ; and, before the year was out, the author was 
pronounced the best poet of his time. 

The appearance of The Traveller at once altered Goldsmith's 
intellectual standing in the estimation of society ; but its effect 
upon the club, if we may judge from the account given by Haw- 
kins, was almost ludicrous. They were lost in astonishment that 
a "newspaper essayist" and "bookseller's drudge" should have 
written such a poem. On the evening of its announcement to 
them Goldsmith had gone away early, after "rattling away as 
usual," and they knew not how to reconcile his heedless garrulity 
with the serene beauty, the easy grace, the sound good sense, and 
the occasional elevation of his poetry. They could scarcely believe 
that such magic numbers had flowed from a man to whom in gen- 
eral, says Johnson, " it was with difficulty they could give a hear- 
ing." "Well," exclaimed Chamier, "I do believe he wrote this 
poem himself, and let me tell you, that is believing a great deal." 

At the next mectiiig of the club, Chamier sounded the author a 
little about his poem. "Mr. Goldsmith," said he, "what do you 
mean by the last word in the first line of your Traveller^ ' Remote, 
unfriended, melancholy, doiv ' .? — do you mean tardiness of loco- 
motion ? " — " Yes," replied Goldsmith, inconsiderately, being prob- 
ably flurried at the moment. "No, sir," interposed his protecting 
friend Johnson, " you did not mean tardiness of locomotion ; you 



'' THE TEAVELLEB.'' 117 

meant that sluggishness of mind which comes upon a man in soli- 
tude." — "Ah," exclaimed Goldsmith, ""that was what I meant." 
Chamier immediately believed that Johnson himself had written 
the line, and a rumor became prevalent that he was the author of 
many of the finest passages. This was ultimately set at rest by 
Johnson himself, who marked with a pencil all the verses he had 
contributed, nine in number, inserted towards the conclusion, and 
by no means the best in the poem. He moreover, with generous 
warmth, pronounced it the finest poem that had appeared since the 
days of Pope. 

But one of the highest testimonials to the charm of the poem 
was given by Miss Reynolds, who had toasted poor Goldsmith as 
the ugliest man of her acquaintance. Shortly after the appearance 
of The Traveller, Dr. Johnson read it aloud from beginning to 
end in her presence. " Well," exclaimed she, when he had finished, 
" I never more shall think Dr. Goldsmith ugly ! " 

On another occasion, when the merits of The Traveller were 
discussed at Reynolds's board, Langton declared " there was not a 
bad line in the poem, not one of Dryden's careless verses." " I 
was glad," observed Reynolds, "to hear Charles Fox say it was 
one of the finest poems in the English language." " Why were 
you glad?" rejoined Langton, "you surely had no doubt of this 
before." "No," interposed Johnson, decisively; "the merit of 
The Traveller is so well established, that Mr. Fox's praise cannot 
augment it, nor his censure diminish it." 

Boswell, who was absent from England at the time of the pub- 
lication of the Traveller, was astonished on his return, to find 
Goldsmith, whom he had so much undervalued, suddenly elevated 
almost to a par with his idol. He accounted for it by concluding 
that much both of the sentiments and expression of the poem had 
been derived from conversations with Johnson. " He imitates 
you, sir," said this incarnation of toadyism. "Why no, sir," 
replied Johnson, " Jack Hawksworth is one of my imitators, but 
not Goldsmith. Goldy, sir, has great merit." "But, sir, he is 
much indebted to you for his getting so high in the public estima- 



118 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

tion." "Why, sir, he has, perhaps, got sooner to it by his in- 
timacy with me." 

The poem went through several editions in the course of the 
first year, and received some few additions and corrections from 
the author's pen. It produced a golden harvest to Mr. Newbery ; 
but all the remuneration on record, doled out by his niggard hand 
to the author, was twenty guineas ! 

CHAPTER XVI. 

Goldsmith, now that he was rising in the world, and becoming 
a notoriety, felt himself called upon to improve his style of living. 
He accordingly emerged from Wine-Office Court, and took cham- 
bers in the Temple. It is true they were but of humble preten- 
sions, situated on what was then the library staircase, and it 
would appear that he was a kind of inmate with Jeffs, the butler 
of the society. Still he was in the Temple, that classic region 
rendered famous by the Spectator and other essayists as the abode 
of gay wits and thoughtful men of letters ; and which, with its 
retired courts and embowered gardens, in the very heart of a 
noisy metropolis, is, to the quiet-seeking student and author, an 
oasis freshening with verdure in the midst of a desert. Johnson, 
who had become a kind of growling supervisor of the poet's affairs, 
paid him a visit soon after he had installed himself in his new 
quarters, and went prying about the apartment, in his near-sighted 
manner, examining everything minutely. Goldsmith was fidgeted 
by this curious scrutiny, and apprehending a disposition to find 
fault, exclaimed, with the air of a man who had money in both 
pockets, " I shall soon be in better chambers than these." The 
harmless bravado drew a reply from Johnson, which touched the 
chord of proper pride. *'Nay, sir," said he, "never mind that. 
Nil te qusesiveris extra," — implying that his reputation rendered 
him independent of outward show. Happy would it have been 
for poor Goldsmith, could he have kept this consolatory compli- 
ment perpetually in mind, and squared his expenses accordingly. 



A TITLED PATRON. 119 

Among the persons of rank who were struck with the merits of 
the Traveller was the Earl (afterwards Duke) of Northumberland. 
He procured several other of Goldsmith's writings, the perusal of 
which tended to elevate the author in his good opinion, and to gain 
for him his good will. The Earl held the office of Lord-Lieuten- 
ant of Ireland, and understanding Goldsmith was an Irishman, 
was disposed to extend to him the patronage which his high post 
afforded. He intimated the same to his relative. Dr. Percy, who, 
he found, was well acquainted with the poet, and expressed a 
wish that the latter should wait upon him. Here, then, was 
another opportunity for Goldsmith to better his fortune, had he 
been knowing and worldly enough to profit by it. Unluckily the 
path to fortune lay through the aristocratical mazes of Northum- 
berland House, and the poet blundered at the outset. The follow- 
ing is the account he used to give of his visit : " I dressed myself 
in the best manner I could, and, after studying some compliments 
I thought necessary on such an occasion, proceeded to Northum- 
berland House, and acquainted the servants that I had particular 
business with the Duke. They showed me into an antechamber, 
where, after waiting some time, a gentleman, very elegantly 
dressed, made his appearance : taking him for the Duke, I de- 
livered all the fine things I had composed in order to compliment 
him on the honor he had done me ; when, to my great astonish- 
ment, he told me I had mistaken him for his master, who would 
see me immediately. At that instant the Duke came into the 
apartment, and I was so confounded on the occasion that I wanted 
words barely sufficient to express the sense I entertained of the 
Duke's politeness, and went away exceedingly chagrined at the 
blunder I had committed." 

Sir John Hawkins, in his Life of Dr. Johnson, gives some 
farthe^ particulars of this visit, of which he was, in part, a wit- 
ness.f "Having one day," says he, "a call to make on the late 
Duke (then Earl) of Northumberland, I found Goldsmith waiting 
for an audience in an outer room : I asked him what had brought 
him there ; he told me, an invitation from his lordship. I made 



120 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

my business as short as I could, and, as a reason, mentioned that 
Dr. Goldsmith was waiting without. The Earl asked me if I was 
acquainted with him. I told him that I was, adding what I 
thought was most likely to recommend him. I retired, and stayed 
in the outer room to take him home. Upon his coming out, I 
asked him the result of his conversation. ' His lordship,' said he, 
' told me he had read my poem, meaning the Traveller, and was 
much delighted with it ; that he was going to be lord-lieutenant 
of Ireland, and that, hearing I was a native of that countr}!^, he 
should be glad to do me any kindness.' 'And what did you 
answer,' said I, 'to this gracious offer?' 'Why,' said he, 'I 
could say nothing but that I had a brother there, a clergyman, 
that stood in need of help : as for myself, I have no great de- 
pendence on the promises of great men ; I look to the booksellers 
for support ; they are my best friends, and I am not inclined 
to forsake them for others.'" "Thus," continues Sir John, "did 
this idiot in the affairs of the world trifle with his fortunes, and 
put back the hand that was held out to assist him." y 

We cannot join with Sir John in his worldly sneer at the con- 
duct of Goldsmith on this occasion. While we admire that honest 
independence of spirit which prevented him from asking favors for 
himself, we love that warmth of affection which instantly sought 
to advance the fortunes of a brother ; but the jDeculiar merits of 
poor Goldsmith seem to have been little understood by the 
Hawkinses, the Boswells, and the other biographers of the 
day. --^ 

After all, the introduction to Northumberland House did not 
prove so complete a failure as the humorous account given by 
Goldsmith, and the cynical account given by Sir John Hawkins, 
might lead one to suppose. Dr. Percy, the heir male of the 
ancient Percies, brought the poet into the acquaintance of his 
kinswoman, the countess ; who, before her marriage with the earl, 
was in her own right heiress of the House of Northumberland. 
"She was a lady," says Boswell, "not only of high dignity of 
spirit, such as became her noble blood, but of excellent under- 



"THE HEBMIT.'' 121 

standing and lively talents. " Under her auspices a poem of Gold- 
smith's had an aristocratical introduction to the world. This was 
the beautiful ballad of The Hermit, originally published under the 
name of Edwin and Angelina. It was suggested by an old 
English ballad beginning " Gentle Herdsman," shown him by Dr. 
Percy, who was at that time making his famous collection, entitled 
Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, which he submitted to the 
inspection of Goldsmith prior to publication. A few copies only 
of The Hermit were printed at first, with the following title-page : 
"Edwin and Angelina: a Ballad. By Mr. Goldsmith. Printed 
for the Amusement of the Countess of Northumberland." 

All this,, though it may not have been attended with any im- 
mediate pecuniary advantage, contributed to give Goldsmith's 
name and poetry the high stamp of fashion, so potent in England : 
the circle at Northumberland House, however, was of too stately 
and aristocratical a nature to be much to his taste, and we do not 
find that he became familiar in it. 

He was much more at home at Gosfield, the seat of his 
countryman, Robert Nugent, afterwards Baron Nugent and Vis- 
count Clare, who appreciated his merits even more heartily than 
the Earl of Northumberland, and occasionally made him his guest 
both in town and country. Nugent is described as a jovial volup- 
tuary, who left the Roman- Catholic for the Protestant religion, 
with a view to bettering his fortunes ; he had an Irishman's in- 
clination for rich widows, and an Irishman's luck with the sex ; 
having been thrice married, and gained a fortune with each wife. 
He was now nearly sixty, with a remarkably loud voice, broad 
Irish brogue, and ready, but somewhat coarse wit. With all his 
occasional coarseness he was capable of high thought, and had 
produced poems which showed a truly poetic vein. He was long 
a member of the House of Commons, where his ready wit, his 
fearless decision, and good-humored audacity of expression always 
gained him a hearing, though his tall person and awkward manner 
gained him the nickname of Squire Gawky among the political 
scribblers of the day. With a patron of this jovial temperament, 



122 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

Goldsmith probably felt more at ease than with those of higher 
refinement. 

The celebrity which Goldsmith had acquired by his poem of 
The T7'aveller occasioned a resuscitation of many of his miscellane- 
ous and anonymous tales and essays from the various newspapers 
and other transient publications in which they lay dormant. 
These he published in 1765, in a collected form, under the title of 
Essays hy Mr. Goldsmith. " The following Essays," observes he 
in his preface, " have already appeared at different times, and in 
different publications. The pamphlets in which they were in- 
serted being generally unsuccessful, these shared the common fate, 
without assisting the booksellers' aims, or extending the author's 
reputation. The public were too strenuously employed with their 
own follies to be assiduous in estimating mine ; so that many of 
my best attempts in this way have fallen victims to the transient 
topic of the times — the Ghost in Cock Lane, or the Siege of 
Ticonderoga. 

"But, though they have passed pretty silently into the world, 
I can by no means complain of their circulation. The magazines 
and papers of the day have indeed been liberal enough in this 
respect. Most of these essays have been regularly reprinted twice 
or thrice a year, and conveyed to the public through the kennel of 
some engaging compilation. If there be a pride in multiplied edi- 
tions, I have seen some of my labors sixteen times reprinted, and 
claimed by different parents as their own. I have seen them flour- 
ished at the beginning with praise, and signed at the end with the 
names of Philautos, Philalethes, Phileleutheros, and Philanthropos. 
It is time, however, at last to vindicate my claims ; and as these 
entertainers of the public, as they call themselves, have partly 
lived upon me for some years, let me now try if I cannot live 
a little upon myself." 

It was but little, in fact ; for all the pecuniary emolument he 
received from the volume was twenty guineas. It had a good 
circulation, however, was translated into French, and has main- 
tained its stand among the British classics. 



''GOODY TWO SHOES.'' 123 

Notwithstanding that the reputation of Goldsmith had greatly 
risen, his finances were often at a very low ebb, owing to his 
heedlessness as to expense, his liability to be imposed upon, and a 
spontaneous and irresistible propensity to give to every one who 
asked. The very rise in his reputation had increased these em- 
barrassments. It had enlarged his circle of needy acquaintances, 
authors poorer in pocket than himself, who came in search of 
literary comicil ; which generally meant a guinea and a breakfast. 
And then his Irish hangers-on ! " Our Doctor," said one of these 
sponges, "had a constant levee of his distressed countrymen, 
whose wants, as far as he was able, he always relieved ; and he 
has often been known to leave himself without a guinea, in order 
to supply the necessities of others." 

This constant drainage of the purse, therefore, obliged him to 
undertake all jobs proposed by the booksellers, and to keep up a 
kind of running account with Mr. Newbery ; who was his banker 
on all occasions, sometimes for pounds, sometimes for shillings ; 
but who was a rigid accountant, and took care to be amply repaid 
in manuscript. Many effusions, hastily penned in these moments 
of exigency, were published anonymously, and never claimed. 
Some of them have but recently been traced to his pen ; while of 
many the true authorship will probably never be discovered. 
Among otliers, it is suggested, and with great probability, that he 
wrote for Mr. Newbery the famous nursery story of Goody Tivo 
Shoes, which appeared in 1765, at a moment when Goldsmith 
was scribbling for Newbery, and much pressed for funds. Several 
quaint little tales introduced in his Essays show that he had a turn 
for this species of mock history ; and the advertisement and title- 
page bear the stamp of his sly and playful humor. 

"We are desired to give notice that tliere is in the press, and 
speedily will be published, either by subscription or otherwise, as 
the public shall please to determine, the History of Little Goody 
Two Shoes, otherwise Mrs. Margery Two Shoes; with the 
means by which she acquired learning and wisdom, and, in conse- 
quence thereof, her estate ; set forth at large for the benefit of those 



124 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

" Who, from a state of rags and care, 
And having shoes but half a pair, 
Their fortune and their fame should fix, 
And gallop in a coach and six." 

The world is probably not aware of the ingenuity, humor, good 
sense, and sly satire contained in many of the old English nursery- 
tales. They have evidently been the sportive productions of able 
writers, who would not trust their names to productions that 
might be considered beneath their dignity. The ponderous works 
on which they relied for immortality have perhaps sunk into 
oblivion, and carried their names down with them ; while their 
unacknowledged offspring, Jack the Giant Killer, Giles Ginger- 
bread^ and Tom Thumb, flourish in wide-spreading and never- 
ceasing popularity. 

As Goldsmith had now acquired popularity and an extensive 
acquaintance, he attempted, with the advice of his friends, to 
procure a more regular and ample support by resuming the 
medical profession. He accordingly launched himself upon the 
town in style ; hired a man-servant ; replenished his wardrobe at 
considerable expense, and appeared in a professional wig and cane, 
purple silk small-clothes, and a scarlet roquelaure buttoned to the 
chin : a fantastic garb, as we should think at the present day, but 
not unsuited to the fashion of the times. 

With his sturdy little person thus arrayed in the unusual 
magnificence of purple and fine linen, and his scarlet roquelaure 
flaunting from his shoulders, he used to strut into the apartments 
of his patients swaying his three-cornered hat in one hand and his 
medical sceptre, the cane, in the other, and assuming an air of 
gravity and importance suited to the solemnity of his wig; at 
least, such is the picture given of him by the waiting gentle- 
woman who let him into the chamber of one of his lady-patients. 

He soon, however, grew tired and impatient of the duties and 
restraints of his profession; his practice was chiefly among his 
friends, and the fees were not sufficient for his maintenance; he 
was disgusted with attendance on sick-chambers and capricious 



'•'THE VIC An OF WAKEFIELD.'' 125 

patients, and looked back with longing to his tavern-haunts and 
broad convivial nieetings, from which the dignity and duties of his 
medical calling restrained him. At length, on prescribing to a 
lady of his acquaintance, who. to use a hackneyed phrase, "rejoiced" 
in the aristocratical name of Sidebotham, a warm dispute arose 
between him and the apothecary as to the quantity of medicine to 
be administered. The Doctor stood up for the rights and digni- 
ties of his profession, and resented the interference of the com- 
pounder of drugs. His rights and dignities, however, were 
disregarded ; his wig and cane and scarlet roquelaure were of no 
avail; Mrs. Sidebotham sided with the hero of the pestle and mortar; 
and Goldsmith flung out of the house in a passion. "I am deter- 
mined henceforth," said he to Topham Beauclerc, " to leave off pre- 
scribing for friends." "Do so, my dear Doctor," was the reply; 
"whenever you undertake to kill, let it be only your enemies." 
This was the end of Goldsmith's medical career. 

CHAPTER XVII. 

The success of the poem of The Traveller, and the popularity 
which it had conferred on its author, now roused the attention 
of the bookseller in whose hands the novel of The Vicar of Wake- 
field had been slumbering for nearly two long years. The idea 
has generally prevailed that it was Mr. John Newbery to whom 
the manuscript had been sold, and much surprise has been 
expressed that he should be insensible to its merit and suffer it to 
remain unpublished, while putting forth various inferior writings 
by the same author. This, however, is a mistake; it was his 
nephew, Francis Newbery, who had become the fortunate pur- 
chaser. Still the delay is equally unaccountable. Some have 
imagined that the uncle and nephew had business arrangements 
together, in which this work was included, and that the elder 
Newbery, dubious of its success, retarded the publication until the 
full harvest of The Traveller should be reaped. Booksellers are 
prone to make egregious mistakes as to the merit of works in manu- 



126 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

script ; and to undervalue, if not reject, those of classic and en- 
during excellence, when destitute of that false brilliancy commonly 
called "effect." In the present instance, an intellect vastly su- 
perior to that of either of the booksellers was equally at fault. Dr. 
Johnson, speaking of the work to Boswell, some time subsequent 
to its publication, observed, "I myself did not think it would have 
had much success. It was written and sold to a bookseller before 
The Traveller, but published after, so little expectation had the 
bookseller from it. Had it been sold after The Traveller, he 
might have had twice as much money ; though sixty guineas was 
no mean price.^' 

Sixty guineas for the Vicar of Wakefield I and this could be 
pronounced no mean price by Dr. Johnson, at that time the 
arbiter of British talent, and who had had an opportunity of wit- 
nessing the effect of the work upon the public mind ; for its suc- 
cess was immediate. It came out on the 27th of March, 1766; 
before the end of May a second edition was called for ; in three 
months more, a third ; and so it went on, widening in a popularity 
that has never flagged. Rogers, the Nestor of British literature, 
whose refined purity of taste and exquisite mental organization 
rendered him eminently calculated to appreciate a work of the 
kind, declared that of all the books which through the fitful 
changes of three generations he had seen rise and fall, the charm 
of the Vicar of Wakefield had alone continued as at first ; and 
could he revisit the world after an interval of many more genera- 
tions, he should as surely look to find it undiminished. Nor has 
its celebrity been confined to Great Britain. Though so exclu- 
sively a picture of British scenes and manners, it has been trans- 
lated into almost every language, and everywhere its charm has 
been the same. G-oethe, the great genius of Germany, declared in 
his eighty-first year, that it was his delight at the age of twenty, 
that it had in a manner formed a part of his education, influencing 
his taste and feelings throughout life, and that he had recently read 
it again from beginning to end — with renewed delight, and with 
a grateful sense of the early benefit derived from it. 



" THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD.'' 127 

It is needless to expatiate upon the qualities of a work which 
has thus passed from country to country, and language to lan- 
guage, until it is now known throughout the whole reading-M^orld 
and is become a household book in every hand. The secret of its 
universal and enduring popularity is undoubtedly its truth to na- 
ture, but to nature of the most amiable kind, to nature such as 
Goldsmith saw it. The author, as we have occasionally shown in 
the course of this memoir, took his scenes and characters in this, 
as in his other writings, from originals in his own motley experi- 
ence ; but he has given them as seen through the medium of his 
own indulgent eye, and has set them forth with the colorings of 
his own good head and heart. Yet how contradictory it seems 
that this, one of the most delightful pictures of home and homefelt 
happiness should be drawn by a homeless man ; that the most ami- 
able picture of domestic virtue and all the endearments of the 
married state should be drawn by a bachelor, who had been sev- 
ered from domestic life almost from boyhood ; that one of the most 
tender, touching, and affecting appeals on behalf of female loveli- 
ness should have been made by a man whose deficiency in all the 
graces of person and manner seemed to mark him out for a cynical 
disparager of the sex. 

We cannot refrain from transcribing from the work a short pas- 
sage illustrative of what we have said, and which within a won- 
derfully small compass comprises a world of beauty of imagery, 
tenderness of feeling, delicacy and refinement of thought, and match- 
less purity of style. The two stanzas which conclude it, in which are 
told a whole history of woman's wrongs and sufferings, is, for pathos, 
simplicity, and euphony, a gem in the language. The scene depicted 
is where the poor Vicar is gathering around him the wrecks of his 
shattered family, and endeavoring to rally them back to happiness. 

" The next morning the sun arose with peculiar warmth for the sea- 
son, so that we agreed to breakfast together on the honeysuckle bank ; 
where, while we sat, my youngest daughter at my request joined her 
voice to the concert on the trees about us. It was in this place my 
poor Olivia first met her seducer, and every object served to recall her 



128 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

sadness. But that melancholy which is excited by objects of pleasure, 
or inspired by sounds of harmony, soothes the heart instead of corrod- 
ing it. Her mother, too, upon this occasion, felt a pleasing distress, 
and wept and loved her daughter as before. ' Do, my pretty Olivia,' 
cried she, ' let us have that melancholy air your father was so fond of; 
your sister Sophy has already obliged us. Do, child, it will please 
your old father. ' She complied in a manner so exquisitely pathetic 
as moved me. 

" ' When lovely woman stoops to folly, 
And finds too late that men betray. 
What charm can soothe her melancholy, 
What art can wash her guilt away ? 

*' ' The only art her guilt to cover. 

To hide her shame from every eye, 
To give repentance to her lover, 
And wring his bosom — is to die. ' " 

Scarce had the Vicar of Wakefield made its appearance and 
been received with acclamation, than its author was subjected to 
one of the usual penalties that attend success. He was attacked 
in the newspapers. In one of the chapters he had introduced his 
ballad of The Hermit, of which, as we have mentioned, a few 
copies had been printed some considerable time previously for the 
use of the Countess of Northumberland. This brought forth the 
following article in a fashionable journal of the day : — 

"To the Printer of the ' St. James'' s Ghr.oyiicle.'' 

" Sir, — In the ' Reliques of Ancient Poetry,' published about two 
years ago, is a very beautiful little ballad, called ' A Friar of Orders 
Gray.' The ingenious editor, Mr. Percy, supposes that the stanzas sung 
by Ophelia in the play of ' Hamlet ' were parts of some ballad well known 
in Shakspeare's time, and from these stanzas, with the addition of 
one or two of his own to connect them, he has formed the above-men- 
tioned ballad ; the subject of which is, a lady comes to a convent to 
inquire for her love who had been driven there by her disdain. She 
is answered by a friar that he is dead : — 

" ' No, no, he is dead, gone to his death's bed. 
He never will come as:ain.' 



NEWSPAPER ATTACK. 129 

The lady weeps and laments her cruelty ; the friar endeavors to com- 
fort her with morality and religion, but all in vain ; she expresses the 
deepest grief and the most tender sentiments of love, till at last the 
friar discovers himself : — 

" ' And lo! beneath this gown of gray 
Thy own true love appears.' 

" This catastrophe is very fine, and the whole, joined with the 
greatest tenderness, has the greatest simplicity ; yet, though this bal- 
lad was so recently published in the 'Ancient Reliques,' Dr. Gold- 
smith has been hardy enough to publish a poem called 'The Hermit,' 
where the circumstances and catastrophe are exactly the same, only 
with this difference, that the natural simplicity and tenderness of the 
original are almost entirely lost in the languid smoothness and tedious 
paraphrase of the copy, which is as short of the merits of Mr. Percy's 
ballad as the insipidity of negus is to the genuine flavor of champagne. 

"I am, sir, yours, &c., 

" Detector." 

This attack, supposed to be by Goldsmith's constant persecutor, 
the malignant Kenrick, drew from him the following note to the 
editor : — 

" Sir, — As there is nothing I dislike so much as newspaper contro- 
versy, particularly upon trifles, permit me to be as concise as possible 
in informing a correspondent of yours that I recommended Blainville's 
Travels because I thought the book was a good one ; and I think so 
still. I said I was told by the bookseller that it was then first pub- 
lished ; but in that it seems I was misinformed, and my reading was 
not extensive enough to set me right. 

" Another correspondent of yours accuses me of having taken a bal- 
lad I published some time ago, from one by the ingenious Mr. Percy. 
I do not think there is any great resemblance between the two pieces 
in question. If there be any, his ballad was taken from mine. I 
read it to Mr. Percy some years ago ; and he, as we both considered 
these things as trifles at best, told me, with his usual good-humor, the 
next time I saw him, that he had taken my plan to form the frag- 
ments of Shakspeare into a ballad of his own. He then read me his 
little Cento, if I may so call it, and I highly approved it. Such petty 
anecdotes as these are scarcely worth printing ; and, were it not for 
the busy disposition of some of your correspondents, the public should 
never have known that he owes me the hint of his ballad, or that I am 



130 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

obliged to his friendship and learning for communications of a much 

more important nature. 

*' I am, sir, yours, &c., 

"Oliver Goldsmith." 

The unexpected circulation of the Vicar of Wakefield enriched 
the publisher, but not the author. Goldsmith no doubt thought 
himself entitled to participate in the profits of the repeated edi- 
tions ; and a memorandum, still extant, shows that he drew upon 
Mr. Francis Newbery, in the month of June, for fifteen guineas, 
but that the bill was returned dishonored. He continued, there- 
fore, his usual job-work for the booksellers, writing introduc- 
tions, prefaces, and head and tail-pieces for new works ; revising, 
touching up, and modifying travels and voyages ; making compila- 
tions of prose and poetry, and "building books," as he sportively 
termed it. These tasks required little labor or talent, but that 
taste and touch which are the magic of gifted minds. His terms 
began to be proportioned to his celebrity. If his price was at any 
time objected to, "Why, sir," he would say, "it may seem large; 
but then a man may be many years working in obscurity before 
his taste and reputation are fixed or estimated ; and then he is, as 
in other professions, only paid for his previous labors." 

He was, however, prepared to try his fortune in a different 
walk of literature from any he had yet attempted. We have re- 
peatedly adverted to his fondness for the drama ; he was a fre- 
quent attendant at the theatres ; though, as we have shown, he 
considered them under gross mismanagement. He thought, too, 
that a vicious taste prevailed among those who wrote for the 
stage. " A new species of dramatic composition," says he, in one 
of his essays, "has been introduced under the name of sentimental 
comedy, in which the virtues of private life are exhibited rather 
than the vices exposed ; and the distresses rather than the faults 
of mankind make our interest in the piece. In these plays almost 
all the characters are good, and exceedingly generous ; they are 
lavish enough of their tin money on the stage ; and though they 
want humor, have abundance of sentiment and feeling. If they 



PROJECT OF A COMEDY. 131 

happen to have faults or foibles, the spectator is taught not only 
to pardon, but to applaud them in consideration of the goodness 
of their hearts ; so that folly, instead of being ridiculed, is com- 
mended, and the comedy aims at touching our passions, without 
the power of being truly pathetic. In this manner we are likely 
to lose one great source of entertainment on the stage ; for while 
the comic poet is invading the province of the tragic muse, he 
leaves her lively sister quite neglected. Of this, however, he is no 
ways solicitous, as he measures his fame by his profits. . . . 

" Humor at present seems to be depaiting from the stage ; and 
it will soon happen that our comic players will have nothing left 
for it but a fine coat and a song. It depends upon the audience 
whether they will actually drive these poor merry creatures from 
the stage, or sit at a play as gloomy as at the tabernacle. It is 
not easy to recover an art when once lost ; and it will be a just 
punishment, that when, by our being too fastidious, we have 
banished humor from the stage, we should ourselves be deprived 
of the art of laughing." 

Symptoms of reform in the drama had recently taken place. 
The comedy of the Clandestine Marriage, the joint production of 
Col man and Garrick, and suggested by Hogarth's inimitable 
pictures of Mariage a la mode, had taken the town by storm, 
crowded the theatre with fashionable audiences, and formed one of 
the leading literary topics of the year. Goldsmith's emulation 
was roused by its success. The comedy was, in what he con- 
sidered the legitimate line, totally different from the sentimental 
school j it presented pictures of real life, delineations of character 
and touches of humor, in which he felt himself calculated to excel. 
The consequence was, that in the course of this year (1766) he 
commenced a comedy of the same class, to be entitled the " Good- 
Natured Man," at which he diligently wrought whenever the 
hurried occupation of "book-building" allowed him leisure. 



132 OLIVEB GOLDSMITH. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

The social position of Goldsmith had undergone a material 
change since the publication of The Traveller. Before that 
event he was but partially known as the author of some clever 
anonymous writings, and had been a tolerated member of the 
club and the Johnson circle, without much being expected from 
him. Now he had suddenly risen to literary fame, and become 
one of the lions of the day. The highest regions of intellectual 
society were now open to him ; but he was not prepared to move 
in them with confidence and success. Ballymahon had not been a 
good school of manners at the outset of life ; nor had his experi- 
ence as a " poor student " at colleges and medical schools contrib- 
uted to give him the polish of society. He had brought from 
Ireland, as he said, nothing but his "brogue and his blunders," 
and they had never left him. He had travelled, it is true ; but the 
Continental tour which in those days gave the finishing grace to 
the education of a patrician youth, had, with poor Goldsmith, been 
little better than a course of literary vagabondizing. It had 
enriched his mind, deepened and widened the benevolence of his 
heart, and filled his memory with enchanting pictures, but it had 
contributed little to disciplining him for the polite intercourse of 
the world. His life in London had hitherto been a struggle with 
sordid cares and sad humiliations. " You scarcely can conceive," 
wrote he some time previously to his brother, " how much eight 
years of disappointment, anguish, and study have worn me down." 
Several more years had since been added to the term during which 
he had trod the lowly walks of life. He had been a tutor, an 
apothecary's drudge, a petty physician of the suburbs, a book- 
seller's hack, drudging for daily bread. Each separate walk had 
been beset by its peculiar thorns and humiliations. It is wonder- 
ful how his heart retained its gentleness and kindness through all 
these trials; how his mind rose above the "meannesses of pov- 
erty," to which, as he says, he was compelled to submit : but it 



SOCIAL POSITION. 133 

would be still more wonderful, had his manners acquired a tone 
corresponding to the innate grace and refinement of his intellect. 
He was near forty years of age when he published The Traveller, 
and was lifted by it into celebrity. As is beautifully said of him 
by one of his biographers, " he has fought his way to consideration 
and esteem ; but he bears upon him the scars of his twelve years' 
conflict ; of the mean sorrows through which he has passed ; and of 
the cheap indulgences he has sought relief and help from. There 
is nothing plastic in his nature now. His manners and habits 
are completely formed ; and in them any further success can make 
little favorable change, whatever it may effect for his mind or 
genius."^ 

We are not to be surprised, therefore, at finding him make an 
awkward figure in the elegant drawing-rooms which were now 
open to him, and disappointing those who had formed an idea of 
him from the fascinating ease and gracefulness of hi5 poetry. 

Even the literary club, and the circle of which it formed a part, 
after their surprise at the intellectual flights of which he showed 
himself capable, fell into a conventional mode of judging and 
talking of him, and of placing him in absurd and whimsical' 
points of view. His very celebrity operated here to his disadvan- 
tage. It brought him into continual comparison with Johnson, 
who was the oracle of that circle and had given it a tone. Con- 
versation was the great staple there, and of this Johnson was a 
master. He had been a reader and thinker from childhood : his 
melancholy temperament, which unfitted him for the pleasures 
of youth, had made him so. For many years past the vast 
variety of works he had been obliged to consult in preparing his 
Dictionary, had stored an uncommonly retentive memory with 
facts on all kinds of subjects ; making it a jDerfect colloquial 
armory. "He had all his life," says Boswell, "habituated him- 
self to consider conversation as a trial of intellectual vigor and 
skill. He had disciplined himself as a talker as well as a writer, 
making it a rule to impart whatever he knew in the most forcible 

1 Forster's Goldsmith. 



134 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

language he could put it in, so that by constant practice and 
never suffering any careless expression to escape him, he had 
attained an extraordinary accuracy and command of language." 

His conversation in all companies, according to Sir Joshua 
Reynolds, was such as to secure him universal attention, some- 
thing above the usual colloquial style being always expected from 
him. 

"I do not care," said Orme, the historian of Hindostan, "on 
what subject Johnson talks ; but I love better to hear him talk 
than anybody. He either gives you new thoughts or a new 
coloring." 

A stronger and more graphic eulogium is given by Dr. Percy. 
"The conversation of Johnson," says he, "is strong and clear, 
and may be compared to an antique statue, where every vein and 
muscle is distinct and clear." 

Such was the colloquial giant with which Goldsmith's celebrity 
and his habits of intimacy brought him into continual comparison ; 
can we wonder that he should appear to disadvantage ? Conver- 
sation grave, discursive, and disputatious, such as Johnson ex- 
celled and delighted in, was to him a severe task, and he never 
was good at a task of any kind. He had not, like Johnson, a 
vast fund of acquired facts to draw upon ; nor a retentive memory 
to furnish them forth when wanted. He could not, like the great 
lexicographer, mould his ideas and balance his periods while talk- 
ing. He had a flow of ideas, but it was apt to be hurried and 
confused ; and, as he said of himself, he had contracted a hesitat- 
ing and disagreeable manner of speaking. He used to say that 
he always argued best when he argued alone ; that is to say, he 
could master a subject in his study, with his pen in his hand ; 
but when he came into company he grew confused, and was unable 
to talk about it. Johnson made a remark concerning him to some- 
what of the same purport. " No man," said he, " is more foolish 
than Goldsmith when he has not a pen in his hand, or more wise 
when he has." Yet with all this conscious deficiency he was con- 
tinually getting involved in colloquial contests with Johnson and 



goldsmith's conversation. 135 

other prime talkers of the literary circle. He felt that he had 
become a notoriety, that he had entered the lists and was expected 
to make fight; so with that heedlessness which characterized him 
in everything else he dashed on at a venture, trusting to chance 
in this as in other things, and hoping occasionally to make a 
lucky hit. Johnson perceived his hap-hazard temerity, but gave 
him no credit for the real diffidence which lay at bottom. " The 
misfortune of Goldsmith in conversation," said he, "is this, he 
goes on without knowing how he is to get off. His genius is 
great, but his knowledge is small. As they say of a generous 
man it is a pity he is not rich, we may say of Goldsmith it is a 
pity he is not knowing. He would not keep his knowledge to 
himself." And, on another occasion, he observes : " Goldsmith, 
rather than not talk, will talk of what he knows himself to be 
ignorant, which can only end in exposing him. If in company 
with two founders, he would fall a-talking on the method of mak- 
ing canDon, though both of them would soon see that he did not 
know what metal a cannon is made of." And again : " Gold- 
smith should not be forever attempting to shine in conversation ; 
he has not temper for it, he is so much mortified when he fails. 
Sir, a game of jokes is composed partly of skill, partly of chance; 
a man may be beat at times by one who has not the tenth part 
of his wit. Now Goldsmith, putting himself against another, is 
like a man laying a hundred to one, who cannot spare the hun- 
dred. It is not worth a man's while. A man should not lay a 
hundred to one unless he can easily spare it, though he has a 
hundred chances for him ; he can get but a guinea, and he may 
lose a hundred. Goldsmith is in this state. When he contends, 
if he gets the better, it is a very little addition to a man of his 
literary reputation ; if he does not get the better, he is miserably 
vexed." 

Johnson was not aware how much he was himself to blame in 
producing this vexation. "Goldsmith," said Miss Reynolds, 
"always appeared to be overawed by Johnson, particularly when 
in company with people of any consequence ; always as if im- 



136 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

pressed with fear of disgrace ; and indeed well he might. I have 
been witness to many mortifications he has suffered in Dr. John- 
son's company." 

It may not have been disgrace that he feared, but rudeness. 
The great lexicographer, spoiled by the homage of society, was 
still more prone than himself to lose temper when the argument 
went against him. He could not brook appearing to be worsted, 
but would attempt to bear down his adversary by the rolling 
thunder of his periods, and, when that failed, would become down- 
right insulting. Boswell called it " having recourse to some 
sudden mode of robust sophistry " ; but Goldsmith designated it 
much more happily. " There is no arguing with Johnson," said 
he, "/or, ivhen hi& ijistol misses fire, he knocks you down with the 
hut-end of it^^ 

In several of the intellectual collisions recorded by Boswell as 
triumphs of Dr. Johnson, it really appears to us that Goldsmith 
had the best both of the wit and the argument, and especially of 
the courtesy and good-nature. 

On one occasion he certainly gave Johnson a capital reproof as 
to his own colloquial peculiarities. Talking of fables, Goldsmith 
observed that the animals introduced in them seldom talked in 
character. "For instance," said he, "the fable of the little fishes, 
who. saw birds fly over their heads, and, envying them, petitioned 
Jupiter to be changed into birds. The skill consists in making 
them talk like little fishes." Just then observing that Dr. John- 
son was shaking his sides and laughing, he immediately added, 
" Why, Dr. Johnson, this is not so easy as you seem to think ; 
for, if you were to make little fishes talk, they would talk like 
whales." 

But though Goldsmith suffered frequent mortifications in society 
from the overbearing, and sometimes harsh, conduct of Johnson, 



1 The following is given by Boswell, as an instance of robust sophistry: 
— ** Once, when I was pressing upon him with visible advantage, he stopped 
me thus — ' My dear Boswell, let's have no more of this ; you'll make noth- 
ing of it; I'd rather hear you whistle a Scotch tune.' " 



THE SHILLING WHIST-CLUB. 137 

he always did justice to his benevolence. When royal pensions 
were granted to Dr. Johnson and Dr. Shebbeare, a punster re- 
marked, that the king had pensioned a she-hear and a he-bear ; 
to which Goldsmith replied, "Johnson, to be sure, has a rough- 
ness in his manner, but no man alive has a more tender heart. 
He has nothing of the hear hut the skin.^^ 

Goldsmith, in conversation, shone most when he least thought 
of shining; when he gave up all effort to appear wise and learned, 
or to cope with the oracular sententiousness of Johnson, and gave 
way to his natural impulses. Even Boswell could perceive his 
merits on these occasions. " For my part," said he, condescend- 
ingly, " I like very well to hear honest Goldsmith talk away care- 
lessly ; " and many a much wiser man than Boswell delighted in 
those outpourings of a fertile fancy and a generous heart. In his 
happy moods, Goldsmith had an artless simplicity and buoyant 
good-humor, that led to a thousand amusing blunders and whim- 
sical confessions, much to the entertainment of his intimates ; yet 
in his most thoughtless garrulity there was occasionally the gleam 
of the gold and the flash of the diamond. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

Though Goldsmith's pride and ambition led him to mingle 
occasionally with high society, and to engage in the colloquial 
conflicts of the learned circle, in both of which he was ill at ease 
and conscious of being undervalued, yet he had some social resorts 
in which he indemnified himself for their restraints by indulging 
his humor without control. One of them was a shilling whist- 
club, which held its meetings at the Devil Tavern, near Temple 
Bar, a place rendered classic, we are told, by a club held there in 
old times, to which " rare Ben Jonson " had furnished the rules. 
The company was of a familiar, unceremonious kind, delighting in 
that very questionable wit- which consists in playing off practical 
jokes upon each other. Of one of these Goldsmith was made the 



138 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

butt. Coining to the club one night in a hackuey-coach, he gave 
the coachman by mistake a guinea instead of a shilling, which he 
set down at a dead loss, for there was no likelihood, he said, that 
a fellow of this class would have the honesty to return the money. 
On the next club-evening he was told a person at the street-door 
wished to speak with him. He went forth, but soon returned 
with a radiant countenance. To his surprise and delight the 
coachman had actually brought back the guinea. While he 
launched forth in praise of this unlooked-for piece of honesty, he 
declared it ought not to go unrewarded. Collecting a small sum 
from the club, and no doubt increasing it largely from his own 
purse, he dismissed the Jehu with many encomiums on his good 
conduct. He was still chanting his praises, when one of the club 
requested a sight of the guinea thus honestly returned. To Gold- 
smith's confusion it proved to be a counterfeit. The universal 
burst of laughter which succeeded, and the jokes by which he was 
assailed on every side, showed him that the whole was a hoax, 
and the pretended coachman as much a counterfeit as the guinea. 
He was so disconcerted, it is said, that he soon beat a retreat for 
the evening. 

Another of those free and easy clubs met on Wednesday even- 
ings at the Globe Tavern in Fleet Street. It was somewhat in 
the style of the Three Jolly Pigeons : songs, jokes, dramatic imi- 
tations, burlesque parodies, and broad sallies of humor, formed a 
contrast to the sententious morality, pedantic casuistry, and pol- 
ished sarcasm of the learned circle. Here a huge " tun of man," 
by the name of Gordon, used to delight Goldsmith by singing the 
jovial song of Nottingham Ale, and looking like a butt of it. 
Here, too, a wealthy pig-butcher, charmed, no doubt, by the mild 
philanthropy of The Traveller, aspired to be on the most sociable 
footing with the author ; and here was Tom King, the comedian, 
recently risen to consequence by his performance of Lord Ogleby 
in the new comedy of The Clandestine Marriage. 

A member of more note was one Hugh Kelly, a second-rate 
author, who, as he became a. kind of competitor of Goldsmith's, 



GLOVEU. 139 

deserves particular mention. He was an Irishman, about twenty- 
eight years of age, originally apprenticed to a staymaker in Dub- 
lin ; then writer to a London attorney ; then a Grub-Street hack, 
scribbling for magazines and newspapers. Of late he had set up 
for theatrical censor and satirist, and in a paper called " Thespis," 
in emulation of Churchill's Rosciad, had harassed many of the 
poor actors without mercy, and often without wit; but had lav- 
ished his incense on Garrick, who, in consequence, took him into 
favor. He was the author of several works of superficial merit, 
but which had sufficient vogue to inflate his vanity. This, how- 
ever, must have been mortified on his first introduction to John- 
son ; after sitting a short time he got up to take leave, expressing 
a fear that a longer visit might be troublesome. " Not in the 
least, sir," said the surly moralist, " I had forgotten you were in 
the room." Johnson used to speak of him as a man who had 
written more than he had read. 

A prime wag of this club was one of Goldsmith's poor country- 
men and hangers-on, by the name of Glover. He had originally 
been educated for the medical profession, but had taken in early 
life to the stage, though apparently without much success. While 
performing at Cork, he undertook, partly in jest, to restore life to 
the body of a malefactor, who had just been executed. To the 
astonishment of every one, himself among the number, he suc- 
ceeded. The miracle took wind. He abandoned the stage, re- 
sumed the wig and cane, and considered his fortune as secure. 
Unluckily, there were not many dead people to be restored to 
life in Ireland ; his practice did not equal his expectation, so he 
came to London, where he continued to dabble indifierently, and 
rather unprofitably, in physic and literature.- 

He was a great frequenter of the Globe and Devil taverns, 
where he used to amuse the company by his talent at story-telling 
and his powers of mimicry, giving capital imitations of Garrick, 
Foote, Colman, Sterne, and other public characters of the day. 
He seldom happened to have money enough to pay his reckoning, 
but was always sure to find some ready purse among those who 



140 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

had been amused by his humors. Goldsmith, of course, was one 
of the readiest. It was through him that Glover was admitted 
to the Wednesday Club, of which his theatrical imitations 
became the delight. Glover, however, was a little anxious for 
the dignity of his patron, which appeared to him to suffer from 
the over-familiarity of some of the members of the club. He 
was especially shocked by the free and easy tone in which 
Goldsmith was addressed by the pig-butcher. "Come, Noll," 
would he say, as he pledged him, " here's my service to you, old 
boy ! " 

Glover whispered to Goldsmith, that he "should not allow 
such liberties." "Let him alone," was the reply, "you'll see 
how civilly I'll let him down." After a time, he called out, 
with marked ceremony and politeness, " Mr. B., I have the honor 
of diinking your good health." Alas ! dignity was not poor 
Goldsmith's forte : he could keep no one at a distance. " Thank'ee, 
thank'ee, Noll," nodded the pig-butcher, scarce taking the pipe 
out of his mouth. "I don't see the effect of your reproof," 
whispered Glover. " I give it up," replied Goldsmith, with a good- 
humored shrug ; "I ought to have known before now there is 
no putting a pig in the right way." 

Johnson used to be severe upon Goldsmith for mingling in 
those motley circles, observing, that, having been originally 
poor, he had contracted a love for low company. Goldsmith, 
however, was guided not by a taste for what was low, but for 
what was comic and characteristic. It was the feeling of the 
artist ; the feeling which furnished out some of his best scenes in 
familiar life ; the feeling with which " rare Ben Jonson " sought 
these very haunts and circles in days of yore, to study Every Man 
in his Humor. 

It was not always, however, that the humor of these associates 
was to his taste : as they became boisterous in their merriment, 
he was apt to become depressed. " The company of fools," says 
he, in one of his essays, " may at first make us smile, but at 
last never fails of making us melancholy." " Often he would be- 



THE GREAT CHAM OF LITERATURE. 141 

come moody," says Glover, "and would leave the party abruptly 
to go home and brood over his misfortune." 

It is possible, however, that he went home for quite a different 
purpose : to commit to paper some scene or passage suggested for 
his comedy of The Good-natured Man. The elaboration of 
humor is often a most serious task ; and we have never witnessed 
a more perfect picture of mental misery than was once presented 
to us by a popular dramatic writer — still, we hope, living — 
whom we found in the agonies of producing a farce which subse- 
quently set the theatres in a roar. 



CHAPTER XX. 

The comedy of The Good-natured Man was completed by 
Goldsmith early in 1767, and submitted to the perusal of John- 
son, Burke, Reynolds, and others of the literary club, by whom 
it was heartily approved. Johnson, who was seldom halfway 
either in censure or applause, pronounced it the best comedy that 
had been written since The Frovoked Husband, and promised 
to furnish the prologue. This immediately became an object of 
great solicitude with Goldsmith, knowing the weight an introduc- 
tion from the Great Cham of literature would have with the 
public; but circumstances occurred which he feared might drive 
the comedy and the prologue from Johnson's thoughts. The latter 
was in the habit of visiting the royal library at the Queen's 
(Buckingham) House, a noble collection of books, in the formation 
of which he had assisted the librarian, Mr. Bernard, with his 
advice. One evening, as he was seated there by the fire reading, he 
was surprised by the entrance of the King (George III), then a 
young man, who sought this occasion to have a conversation with 
him. The conversation was varied and discursive, the King 
shifting from subject to subject according to his wont. "During 
the whole interview," says Boswell, " Johnson talked to his 
Majesty with profound respect, but still in his open, manly 



142 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

manner, with a sonorous voice, and never in that subdued tone 
which is commonly used at the levee and in the drawing-room. 
' I found his Majesty wished I should talk,' said he, ' and I made 
it my business to talk. I find it does a man good to be talked 
to by his sovereign. In the first place, a man cannot be in a 
passion.' " It would have been well for Johnson's colloquial dis- 
putants, could he have often been under such decorous restraint. 
Profoundly monarchical in his principles, he retired from the 
interview highly gratified with the conversation of the King and 
with his gracious behavior. " Sir," said he to the librarian, " they 
may talk of the King as they will, but he is the finest gentleman I 
have ever seen." — " Sir," said he subsequently to Bennet Lang- 
ton, " his manners are those of as fine a gentleman as we may 
suppose Louis the Fourteenth or Charles the Second." 

While Johnson's face was still radiant with the reflex of royalty, 
he was holding forth one day to a listening group at Sir Joshua 
Reynolds's, who were anxious to hear every particular of this 
memorable conversation. Among other questions, the King had 
asked him whether he was writing anything. His reply was, 
that he thought he had already done his part as a writer. " I 
should have thought so, too," said the King, "if you had not 
written so well." — "No man," said Johnson, commenting on 
this speech, " could have made a handsomer compliment ; and 
it was fit for a King to pay. It was decisive." — " But did you 
make no reply to this high compliment?" asked one of the 
company. "No, sir," replied the profoundly deferential Johnson; 
" when the King had said it, it was to be so. It was not for me 
to bandy civilities with my sovereign." 

During all the time that Johnson was thus holding forth. 
Goldsmith, who was present, appeared to take no interest in 
the royal theme, but remained seated on a sofa at a distance^n 
a moody fit of abstraction; at length recollecting himself, he 
sprang up, and advancing, exclaimed, with what Bos well calls 
his usual "frankness and simplicity," — "Well, you acquitted 
yourself in this conversation better than I should have done, for 



NEGOTIATIONS WITH GARRICK. 14B 

I should have bowed and stammered through the whole of it," 
He afterwards explained his seeming inattention by saying that 
his mind was completely occupied about his play, and by fears 
lest Johnson, in his present state of royal excitement, would 
fail to furnish the much-desired prologue. 

How natural and truthful is this explanation. Yet Boswell 
presumes to pronounce Goldsmith's inattention affected, and at- 
tributes it to jealousy. "It was strongly suspected," says he, 
"that he was fretting with chagrin and envy at the singular 
honor Dr. Johnson had lately enjoyed." It needed the littleness 
of mind of Boswell to ascribe such pitiful motives to Goldsmith, 
and to entertain such exaggerated notions of the honor paid to 
Dr. Johnson. 

The Good-natured Man was now ready for performance, but 
the question was, how to get it upon the stage. The affairs 
of Covent Garden, for which it had been intended, were thrown 
into confusion by the recent death of Rich, the manager. Drury 
Lane was under the management of Garrick ; but a feud, it will 
be recollected, existed between him and the poet, from the animad- 
versions of the latter on the mismanagement of theatrical 
affairs, and the refusal of the former to give the poet his vote for 
the secretaryship of the Society of Arts. Times, however, were 
changed. Goldsmith, when that feud took place, was an anony- 
mous writer, almost unknown to fame, and of no circulation in 
society, l^^ow he had become a literary lion ; he was a member 
of the Literary Club ; he was the associate of Johnson, Burke, 
Topham Beauclerc, and other magnates, — in a word, he had risen 
to consequence in the public eye, and of course was of consequence 
in the eyes of David Garrick. Sir Joshua Reynolds saw the lurk- 
ing scruples of pride existing between the author and actor, and 
thinking it a pity that two men of such congenial talents, and who 
might be so serviceable to each other, should be kept asunder by a 
worn-out pique, exerted his friendly offices to bring them together. 
The meeting took place in Reynolds's house in Leicester Square. 
Garrick, however, could not entirely put off the mock majesty of 



144 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

the stage ; he meant to be civil, but he was rather too gracious 
and condescending. Tom Davies, in his Life of Garrich, gives 
an amusing picture of the coming together of these punctilious 
parties. "The manager," says he, "was fully conscious of his 
(Groldsmith's) merit, and perhaps more ostentatious of his abilities 
to serve a dramatic author than became a man of his prudence ; 
Goldsmith was, on his side, as fully persuaded of his own impor- 
tance and independent greatness. Mr. Garrick, who had so long 
been treated with the complimentary language paid to a successful 
patentee and admired actor, expected that the writer would esteem 
the patronage of his play a favor ; Goldsmith rejected all ideas of 
kindness in a bargain that was intended to be of mutual advantage 
to both parties, and in this he was certainly justifiable ; Mr. Gar- 
rick could reasonably expect no thanks for the acting a new play, 
which he would have rejected if he had not been convinced it 
would have amply rewarded his pains and expense. I believe the 
manager was willing to accept the play, but he wished to be 
courted to it ; and the Doctor was not disposed to purchase his 
friendship by the resignation of his sincerity." They separated, 
however, with an understanding on the part of Goldsmith that his 
play would be acted. The conduct of Garrick subsequently proved 
evasive, not through any lingerings of past hostility, but from 
habitual indecision in matters of the kind, and from real scruples 
of delicacy. He did not think the piece likely to succeed on the 
stage, and avowed that opinion to Reynolds and Johnson, — but 
hesitated to say as much to Goldsmith, through fear of wounding 
his feelings. A further misunderstanding was the result of this 
want of decision and frankness ; repeated interviews and some 
correspondence took place without bringing matters to a point, 
and in the meantime the theatrical season passed away. 

Goldsmith's pocket, never well supplied, suffered grievously by 
this delay, and he considered himself entitled to call upon the 
manager, who still talked of acting the play, to advance him forty 
pounds upon a note of the younger Newbery. Garrick readily 
complied, but subsequently suggested certain important alterations 



THE AUTHOR AND THE ACTOB. 145 

in the comedy as indispensable to its success ; these were indig- 
nantly rejected by the author, but pertinaciously insisted on by the 
manager. Garrick proposed to leave the matter to the arbitration 
of Whitehead, the laureate, who officiated as his "reader" and 
elbow-critic. Goldsmith was more indignant than ever, and a vio- 
lent dispute ensued, which was only calmed by the interference of 
Burke and Eeynolds. 

Just at this time, order came out of confusion in the affairs of 
Covent Garden. A pique having risen between Colman and Gar- 
rick, in the course of their joint authorship of The Clandestine 
Marriage, the former had become manager and part- proprietor of 
Covent Garden, and was preparing to open a powerful competition 
with his former colleague. On hearing of this, Goldsmith made 
overtures to Colman ; who, without waiting to consult his fellow- 
proprietors, who were absent, gave instantly a favorable reply. 
Goldsmith felt the contrast of this warm, encouraging conduct, to 
the chilling delays and objections of Garrick. He at once aban- 
doned his piece to the discretion of Colman. "Dear sir," says he, 
in a letter dated Temple Garden Court, July 9th, "I am very 
much obliged to you for your kind partiality in my favor, and your 
tenderness in shortening the interval of my expectation. That the 
play is liable to many objections I well know, but I am happy that 
it is in hands the most capable in the world of removing them. 
If then, dear sir, you will complete your favor by putting the piece 
into such a state as it may be acted, or of directing me how to do 
it, I shall ever retain a sense of your goodness to me. And indeed, 
though most probably this be the last I shall ever write, yet I 
can't help feeling a secret satisfaction that poets for the future are 
likely to have a protector who declines taking advantage of their 
dreadful situation — and scorns that importance which may be 
acquired by trifling with their anxieties." 

The next day Goldsmith wrote to Garrick, who was at Litchfield, 
informing him of his having transferred his piece to Covent Garden, 
for which it had been originally written, and by the patentee of 
which it was claimed, observing, " As I found you had very great 



146 OLIVER GOLDSMITH, 

difficulties about that piece, I complied with his desire. ... I 
am extremely sorry that you should think me warm at our last 
meeting : your judgment certainly ought to be free, especially in a 
matter which must in some measure concern your own credit and 
interest. I assure you, sir, I have no disposition to differ with 
you on this or any other account, but am, with an high opinion of 
your abilities, and a very real esteem, sir, your most obedient humble 

^®^^^^*- "Oliver Goldsmith." 

In his reply, Grarrick observed, "I was, indeed, much hurt that 
your warmth at our last meeting mistook my sincere and friendly 
attention to your play for the remains of a former misunderstanding, 
which I had as much forgot as if it had never existed. What I 
said to you at my own house I now repeat, that I felt more pain in 
giving my sentiments than you possibly would in receiving them. 
It has been the business, and ever will be, of my life: to live on the 
best terms With men of genius ; and I know that Dr. Goldsmith 
will have no reason to change his previous friendly disposition 
towards me, as I shall be glad of every future opportunity to con- 
vince him how much I am his obedient servant and well-wisher. 

"D. Garkick." 



CHAPTER XXI. 

Though Goldsmith's comedy was now in train to be performed, 
it could not be brought out before Christmas ; in the meantime he 
must live. Again, therefore, he had to resort to literary jobs for 
his daily support. These obtained for him petty occasional sums, 
the largest of which was ten pounds, from the elder Newbery, for 
an historical compilation ; but this scanty rill of quasi patronage, 
so sterile in its products, was likely soon to cease ; ISTewbery being 
too ill to attend to business, and having to transfer the whole 
management of it to his nephew. 

At this time Tom Davies, the sometime Roscius, sometime bib- 
liopole, stepped forward to Goldsmith's relief, and proposed that he 



TOM DAVIES. 147 

should undertake an easy popular history of Rome in two volumes. 
An arrangement was soon made. Goldsmith undertook to com- 
plete it in two years, if possible, for two hundred and fifty guineas, 
and forthwith set about his task with cheerful alacrity. As usual, 
he sought a rural retreat during the summer months, where he 
might alternate his literary labors with strolls about the green 
fields. "Merry Islington" was again his resort, but he now 
aspired to better quarters than formerly, and engaged the cham- 
bers occupied occasionally by Mr. Newbery, in Canonbury House, 
or Castle, as it is popularly called. This had been a hunting-lodge 
of Queen Elizabeth, in whose time it was surrounded by parks and 
forests. In Goldsmith's day, nothing remained of it but an old 
brick tower ; it was still in the country amid rural scenery, and 
was a favorite nestling-place of authors, publishers, and others of 
the literary order. ^ A number of these he had for fellow-occupants 
of the castle ; and they formed a temporary club, which held its 
meetings at the Crown Tavern, on the Islington lower road ; and 
here he presided in his own genial style, and was the life and 
delight of the company. 

The writer of these pages visited old Canonbury Castle some 
years since, out of regard to the memory of Goldsmith. The 
apartment was still shown which the poet had inhabited, consist- 
ing of a sitting-room and small bedroom, with panelled wainscots 
and Gothic windows. The quaintness and quietude of the place 
were still attractive. It was one of the resorts of citizens on their 
Sunday walks, who would ascend to the top of the tower and 
amuse themselves with reconnoitring the city through a telescope. 



1 See on the distant slope, majestic shows 
Old Canonbury' s tower, an ancient pile 
To various fates assigned ; and where by turns 
Meanness and grandeur have alternate reign'd ; 
Thither, in latter days, hath genius fled 
From yonder city, to respire and die. 
There the sweet bard of Auburn sat, and tuned 
The plaintive moanings of his village dirge. 
There learned Chambers treasured lore for men, 
And Newbery there his A-B-C's for babes. 



148 OLIVEE GOLDSMITH. 

Not far from this tower were the gardens of the White Conduit 
House, a Cockney Elysium, where Goldsmith used to figure in 
the humbler days of his fortune. In the first edition of his 
Essays he speaks of a stroll in these gardens, where he at that 
time, no doubt, thought himself in perfectly genteel society. After 
his rise in the world, however, he became too knowing to speak of 
such plebeian haunts. In a new edition of his Essays, therefore, 
the White Conduit House and its gardens disappear, and he 
speaks of " a stroll in the Park." 

While Goldsmith was literally living from hand to mouth by 
the forced drudgery of the pen, his independence of spirit was sub- 
jected to a sore pecuniary trial. It was the opening of Lord 
North's administration, a time of great political excitement. The 
public mind was agitated by the question of American taxation, 
and other questions of like irritating tendency. Junius and Wilkes 
and other powerful writers were attacking the administration 
with all their force; Grub Street was stirred up to its lowest 
depths ; inflammatory talent of all kinds was in full activity, and 
the kingdom was deluged with pamphlets, lampoons, and libels of 
the grossest kinds. The ministry were looking anxiously round 
for literary support. It was thought that the pen of Goldsmith 
might be readily enlisted. His hospitable friend and countryman, 
Robert Nugent, politically known as Squire Gawky, had come out 
strenuously for colonial taxation ; had been selected for a lordship 
of the board of trade, and raised to the rank of Baron Nugent and 
Viscount Clare. His example, it was thought, would be enough 
of itself to bring Goldsmith into the ministerial ranks ; and then 
what writer of the day was proof against a full purse or a pension ? 
Accordingly one Parson Scott, chaplain to Lord Sandwich, and 
author of "Anti Sejanus Panurge," and other political libels in 
support of the administration, was ' sent to negotiate with the 
poet, who at this time was returned to town. Dr. Scott, in after- 
years, when his political subserviency had been rewarded by two 
fat crown-livings, used to make what he considered a good story 
out of this embassy to the poet. " I found him," said he, "in a 



DEATH OF NEWBEEY. 149 

miserable suit of chambers, in the Temple. I told him my author- 
ity : I told how I was empowered to pay most liberally for his ex- 
ertions ; and, would you believe it ! he was so absurd as to say, ' I can 
earn as much as will supply my wants without writing for any 
party ; the assistance you offer is therefore unnecessary to me ; ' — 
and so I left him in his garret ! " Who does not admire the 
sturdy independence of poor Goldsmith toiling in his garret for nine 
guineas the job, and smile with contempt at the indignant won- 
der of the political divine, albeit his subserviency was repaid by 
two fat crown-livings 1 

Not long after this occurrence, Goldsmith's old friend, though 
frugal-handed employer, ISTewbery, of picture-book renown, closed 
his mortal career. The poet has celebrated him as the friend of all 
mankind ; he certainly lost nothing by his friendship. He coined 
the brains of his authors in the times of their exigency, and made 
them pay dear for the plank put out to keep them from drowning. 
It is not likely his death caused much lamentation among the 
scribbling tribe ; we may express decent respect for the memory 
of the just, but we shed tears only at the grave of the generous. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

The comedy of The Good-natured Man was doomed to ex- 
perience delays and difficulties to the very last. Garrick, notwith- 
standing his professions, had still a lurking grudge against the 
author, and tasked his managerial arts to thwart him in his 
theatrical enterprise. For this purpose he undertook to build up 
Hugh Kelly, Goldsmith's boon companion of the Wednesday club, 
as a kind of rival. Kelly had written a comedy called False Deli- 
cacy, in which were embodied all the meretricious qualities of the 
sentimental school. Garrick, though he had decried that school, 
and had brought out his comedy of The Clandestine Marriage in 
opposition to it, now lauded False Delicacy to the skies, and 



150 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

prepared to bring it out at Drury Lane with all possible stage- 
effect. He even went so far as to write a prologue and epilogue 
for it, and to touch up some parts of the dialogue. He had 
become reconciled to his former colleague, Colnian, and it is 
intimated that one condition in the treaty of peace between these 
potentates of the realms of pasteboard (equally prone to play into 
each other's hands with the confederate potentates on the great 
theatre of life) was, that Goldsmith's play should be kept back 
until Kelly's had been brought forward. 

In the meantime the poor author, little dreaming of the deleteri- 
ous influence at work behind the scenes, saw the appointed time 
arrive and pass by without the performance of his play ; while 
False Delicacy was brought out at Drury Lane (January 23, 1768) 
with all the trickery of managerial management. Houses were 
packed to applaud it to the echo ; the newspapers vied with each 
other in their venal praises, and night after night seemed to give 
it a fresh triumph. 

While False Delicacy was thus borne on the full tide of fictitious 
prosperity, The Good-natured Man was creeping through the last 
rehearsals at Co vent Garden. The success of the rival piece 
threw a damp upon author, manager, and actors. Goldsmith 
went about with a face full of anxiety ; Colman's hopes in the 
piece declined at each rehearsal ; as to his fellow-proprietors, they 
declared they never entertained any. All the actors were discon- 
tented with their parts, excepting Ned Shuter, an excellent low 
comedian, and a pretty actress named Miss Walford ; both of 
whom the poor author ever afterward held in grateful recollection. 

Johnson, Goldsmith's growling monitor and unsparing castiga- 
tor in times of heedless levity, stood by Mm at present with that pro- 
tecting kindness with which he ever befriended him in time of need. 
He attended the rehearsals ; he furnished the prologue according 
to promise ; he pish'd and pshaw'd at any doubts and fears on 
the part of the author, but gave him sound counsel, and held him 
up with a steadfast and manly hand. Inspirited by his sympathy, 
Goldsmith plucked up new heart, and arrayed himself for the 



" THE GOOB-NATUEED MAN.'' 151 

grand trial with unusual care. Ever since his elevation into the 
polite world, he had improved in his wardrobe and toilet. John- 
son could no longer accuse him of being shabby in his appearance ; 
he rather went to the other extreme. On the present occasion 
there is an entry in the books of his tailor, Mr. William Filby, of 
a suit of " Tyrian bloom, satin grain, and ga,rter blue silk breeches, 
£8 2s. 7d." Thus magnificently attired, he attended the theatre 
and watched the reception of the play, and the effect of each indi- 
vidual scene, with that vicissitude of feeling incident to his mer- 
curial nature. 

Johnson's prologue was solemn in itself, and being delivered by 
Brinsley in lugubrious tones suited to the ghost in Hamlet, seemed 
to throw a portentous gloom on the audience. Some of the scenes 
met with great applause, and at such times Goldsmith was highly 
elated ; others went off coldly, or there were slight tokens of dis- 
approbation, and then his spirits would sink. The fourth act saved 
the piece ; for Shuter, who had the main comic character of Croaker, 
was so varied and ludicrous in his execution of the scene in which 
he reads an incendiary letter, that he drew down thunders of 
applause. On his coming behind the scenes, Goldsmith greeted 
him with an overflowing heart ; declaring that he exceeded his 
own idea of the character, and made it almost as new to him as 
to any of the audience. 

On the whole, however, both the author and his friends were 
disappointed at the reception of the piece, and considered it a 
failure. Poor Goldsmith left the theatre with his towering hopes 
completely cut down. He endeavored to hide his mortification, 
and even to assume an air of unconcern while among his associates j 
but the moment he was alone with Dr. Johnson, in whose rough but 
magnanimous nature he reposed unlimited confidence, he threw off 
all restraint and gave way to an almost childlike burst of grief. 
Johnson, who had shown no want of sympathy at the proper 
time, saw nothing in the partial disappointment of over-rated ex- 
pectations to warrant such ungoverned emotions, and rebuked him 
sternly for what he termed a silly affectation, saying that " No 



152 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

man should be expected to sympathize with the sorrows of 
vanity." 

When Goldsmith had recovered from the blow, he, with his 
usual unreserve, made his past distress a subject of amusement to 
his friends. Dining one day, in company with Dr. Johnson, at the 
chaplain's table at St. James's Palace, he entertained the com- 
pany with a particular and comic account of all his feelings on the 
night of representation, and his despair when the piece was hissed. 
How he went, he said, to the Literary Club ; chatted gayly, as if 
nothing had gone amiss ; and, to give a greater idea of his uncon- 
cern, sang his favorite song about an old woman tossed in a blan- 
ket seventeen times as high as the moon. . . . "All this while, " 
added he, "I was suffering horrid tortures, and, had I put a bit 
in my mouth, I verily believe it would have strangled me on the 
spot, I was so excessively ill ; but I made more noise than usual 
to cover all that ; so they never jDerceived my not eating, nor sus- 
pected the anguish of my heart ; but when all were gone except 
Johnson here, I burst out a-crying, and even swore that I would 
never write again." 

Dr. Johnson sat in amaze at the odd frankness and childlike 
self-accusation of jDoor Goldsmith. When the latter had come to 
a pause, " All this. Doctor," said he, dryly, " I thought had been 
a secret between you and me, and I am sure I would not' have 
said anything about it for the world." But Goldsmith had no 
secrets : his follies, his weaknesses, his errors were all thrown to 
the surface ; his heart was really too guileless and innocent to 
seek mystery and concealment. It is too often the false, designing 
man that is guarded in his conduct and never offends proprieties. 

It is singular, however, that Goldsffiith, who thus in conversa- 
tion could keep nothing to himself, should be the author of a 
maxim which would inculcate the. most thorough dissimulation. 
"Men of the world," says he in one of the papers of the Bee, 
" maintain that the true end of speech is not so much to express 
our wants as to conceal them." How often is this quoted as one 
of the subtle remarks of the fine-witted Talleyrand ! 



INTERMEDDLING OF THE PRESS. 153 

The Good-Matured Man was performed for ten nights in succes- 
sion ; the third, sixth, and ninth nights were for the author's 
benefit ; the fifth night it was commanded by their Majesties ; 
after this it was played occasionally, but rarely, having always 
pleased more in the closet than on the stage. 

As to Kelly's comedy, Johnson pronounced it entirely devoid of 
character, and it has long since passed into oblivion. Yet it is an 
instance how an inferior production, by dint of puffing and trum- 
peting, may be kept up for a time on the surface of popular 
opinion, or rather of popular talk. What had been done for 
False Delicacy on the stage was continued by the press. The 
booksellers vied with the manager in launching it upon the town. 
They announced that the first impression of three thousand copies 
was exhausted before two o'clock on the day of publication ; four 
editions, amounting to ten thousand copies, were sold - in the 
course of the season ; a public breakfast was given to Kelly at 
the Chapter Cofiee-House, and a piece of plate presented to him 
by the publishers. The comparative merits of the two plays were 
continually subjects of discussion in green-rooms, coffee-houses, 
and other places where theatrical questions were discussed. 

Goldsmith's old enemy, Kenrick, that "viper of the press," en- 
deavored on this, as on many other occasions, to detract from his 
well-earned fame ; the poet was excessively sensitive to these 
attacks, and had not the art and self-command to conceal his 
feelings. 

Some scribblers on the other side insinuated that Kelly had 
seen the manuscript of Goldsmith's play, while in the hands of 
Garrick or elsew^here, and had borrowed some of the situations 
and sentiments. Some of the wags of the day took a mischievous 
pleasure in stirring up a feud between the two authors. Gold- 
smith became nettled, though he could scarcely be deemed jealous 
of one so far his inferior. He spoke disparagingly, though no 
doubt sincerely, of Kelly's play : the latter retorted. Still, when 
they met one day behind the scenes of Covent Garden, Gold- 
smith, with his customary urbanity, congratulated Kelly on his 



154 OLIVER GOLDSMITB. 

success. " If I thought you smcere, Mr. Goldsmith," replied .the 
other, abruptly, "I should thank you." Goldsmith was not a man 
to harbor spleen or ill-will, and soon laughed at this unworthy 
rivalship ; but the jealousy and envy awakened in Kelly's mind 
long continued. He is even accused of having given vent to his 
hostility by anonymous attacks in the newspapers, the basest 
resource of dastardly and malignant spirits ; but of this there is 
no positive proof. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

The profits resulting from The Good-natured Man were 
beyond any that Goldsmith had yet derived from his works. He 
netted about four hundred pounds from the theatre, and one hun- 
dred pounds from his publisher. 

Five hundred pounds ! and all at one miraculous draught ! It 
appeared to him wealth inexhaustible. It at once opened his heart 
and hand, and led him into all kinds of extravagance. The first 
symptom was ten guineas sent to Shuter for a box-ticket for his 
benefit, when The Good-natured Man was to be performed. The 
next was an entire change in his domicil. The shabby lodgings 
with Jeffs, the butler, in which he had been worried by Johnson's 
scrutiny, were now exchanged for chambers more becoming a man- 
of his ample fortune. The apartments consisted of three rooms on 
the second floor of No. 2 Brick Court, Middle Temple, on the 
right hand ascending the staircase, and overlooked the umbrageous 
walks of the Temple garden. The l^ase he purchased for .£400, 
and then went on to furnish his rooms with mahogany sofas, card- 
tables, and bookcases ; with curtains, mirrors, and Wilton car- 
pets. His awkward little person was also furnished out in a style 
befitting his apartment ; for, in addition to his suit of " Tyrian 
bloom, satin grain," we find another charged about this time, in 
the books of Mr. Filby, in no less gorgeous terms, being "lined 



FINE APARTMENTS. 155 

with silk and furnished with gold buttons." Thus lodged and 
thus arrayed, he invited the visits of his most aristocratic ac- 
quaintances, and no longer quailed beneath the courtly eye of 
Beauclerc. He gave dinners to Johnson, Reynolds, Percy, Bicker- 
staff, and other friends of note ; and supper-parties to young folks 
of both sexes. These last were preceded by round games of cards, 
at which there was more laughter than skill, and in which the 
sport was to cheat each other ; or by romping games of forfeits 
and blind-man's-buff, at which he enacted the lord of misrule. 
Blackstone, whose chambers were immediately below, and who 
was studiously occupied on his " Commentaries," used to complain 
of the racket made overhead by his revelling neighbor. 

Sometimes Goldsmith would make up a rural party, composed 
of four or five of his "jolly -pigeon" friends, to enjoy what he 
humorously called a " shoemaker's holiday." These would as- 
semble at his chambers in the morning, to partake of a plentiful 
and rather expensive breakfast ; the remains of which, with his 
customary benevolence, he generally gave to some poor woman in 
attendance. The repast ended, the party would set out on foot, 
in high spirits, making extensive rambles by foot-paths and green 
lanes to Blackheath, Wandsworth, Chelsea, Hampton "Court, 
Highgate, or some other pleasant resort, within a few miles of 
London. A simple but gay and heartily relished dinner, at a 
country inn, crowned the excursion. In the evening they strolled 
back to town, all the better in health and spirits for a day spent 
in rural and social enjoyment. Occasionally, when extravagantly 
inclined, they adjourned from dinner to drink tea at the White 
Conduit House ; and, now and then, concluded their festive day 
by supping at the Grecian or Temple Exchange Coffee-Houses, or 
at the Globe Tavern, in Fleet Street. The whole expenses of the 
day never exceeded a crown, and were often from three and six- 
pence to four shillings; for the best part of their entertainment, 
sweet air and rural scenes, excellent exercise and joyous conversa- 
tion, cost nothing. 

One of Goldsmith's humble companions, on these excursions, 



156 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

was his occasional amanuensis, Peter Barlow, whose quaint pecu- 
liarities afforded much amusement to the company. Peter was 
poor but punctilious, squaring his expenses according to his 
means. He always wore the same garb ; fixed his regular expeh- 
diture for dinner at a trifling sum, which, if left to himself, he 
never exceeded, but which he always insisted on paying. His 
oddities always made him a welcome companion on the "shoe- 
maker's holidays." The dinner, on these occasions, generally ex- 
ceeded considerably his tariff; he put down, however, no more 
than his regular sum, and Goldsmith made up the difterence. 

Another of these hangers-on, for whom, on such occasions, he 
was content to " pay the shot," was his country-man Grlover, of 
whom mention has already been made as one of the wags and 
sponges of the Globe and Devil taverns, and a prime mimic at the 
Wednesday Club. 

This vagabond genius has bequeathed us a whimsical story of 
one of his practical jokes upon Goldsmith, in the course of a rural 
excursion in the vicinity of London. They had dined at an inn 
on Hampstead Heights, and were descending the hill, when, in 
passing a cottage, they saw through the open window a party at 
tea. Goldsmith, who was fatigued, cast a wistful glance at the 
cheerful tea-table. " How I should hke to be of that party," ex- 
claimed he. "Nothing more easy," replied Glover; "allow me to 
introduce you." So saying, he entered the house with an air of 
the most perfect familiarity, though an utter stranger, and was 
followed by the unsuspecting Goldsmith, who supposed, of course, 
that he was a friend of the family. The owner of the house rose 
on the entrance of the strangers. The undaunted Glover shook 
hands with him in the most cordial manner possible, fixed his eye 
on one of the company who had a peculiarly good-natured physi- 
ognomy, muttered something like" a recognition, and forthwith 
launched into an amusing story, invented at the moment, of some- 
thing which he pretended had occurred upon the road. The host 
supposed the new-comers were friends of his guests ; the guests, 
that they were friends of the host. Glover did not give them 



GLOVER. . 157 

time to find out the truth. He followed one droll story with an- 
other ; brought his powers of mimicry into play, and kept the 
company in a roar. Tea was offered and accepted ; an hour went 
off in the most sociable manner imaginable, at the end of which 
Glover bowed himself and his companion out of the house with 
many facetious last words, leaving the host and his company to 
compare notes, and to find out what an impudent intrusion they 
had experienced. 

Nothing could exceed the dismay and vexation of Goldsmith 
when triumphantly told by Glover that it was all a hoax, and 
that he did not know a single soul in the house. His first 
impulse was to return instantly and vindicate himself from all 
participation in the jest ; but a few words from his free-and-easy 
companion dissuaded him. "Doctor," said he, coolly, "we are 
unknown ; you quite as much as I j if you return and tell the 
story, it will be in the newspapers to-morrow ; nay, upon recollec- 
tion, I remember in one of their offices the face of that squinting 
fellow who sat in the corner as if he was treasuring up my stories 
for future use, and we shall be sure of being exposed; let us 
therefore keep our own counsel." 

This story was frequently afterward told by Glover, with rich 
dramatic effect, repeating and exaggerating the conversation, and 
mimicking, in ludicrous style, the embarrassment, surprise, and 
subsequent indignation of Goldsmith. 

It is a trite saying that a wheel cannot run in two ruts ; nor 
a man keep two opposite sets of intimates. Goldsmith sometimes 
found his old friends of the "jolly-pigeon" order turning up rather 
awkwardly when he was in company with his new aristocratic 
acquaintances. He gave a whimsical account of the sudden ap- 
parition of one of them at his gay apartments in the Temple, who 
may have been a welcome visitor at his squalid quarters in Green 
Arbor Court. "How do you think he served me?" said he to 
a friend. " Why, sir, after staying away two years, he came one 
evening into my chambers, half drunk, as I was taking a glass of 
wine with Topham Beauclerc and General Oglethorpe; and sit- 



158 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

ting himself down, with most intolerable assurance inquired after 
my health and literary pursuits, as if we were upon the most 
friendly footing. I was at first so much ashamed of ever having 
known such a fellow, that I stifled my resentment, and drew him 
into a conversation on such topics as I knew he could talk upon ; 
in which, to do him justice, he acquitted himself very reputably ; 
when all of a sudden, as if recollecting something, he pulled two 
papers out of his pocket, which he presented to me with great 
ceremony, saying, ' here, my dear friend, is a quarter of a pound 
of tea, and a half pound of sugar, I have brought you; for 
though it is not in my power at present to pay you the two 
guineas you so generously lent me, you, nor any man else, shall 
ever have it to say that I want gratitude.' This," added Gold- 
smith, " was too much. I could no longer keep in my feelings, 
but desired him to turn out of my chambers directly ; which he 
very coolly did, taking up his tea and sugar ; and I never saw 
him afterwards." 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

The heedless expenses of Goldsmith, as may easily be sup- 
posed, soon brought him to the end of his "prize-money," but 
when his purse gave out he drew upon futurity, obtaining ad- 
vances from his booksellers and loans from his friends in the 
confident, hope of soon turning up another trump. The debts 
which he thus thoughtlessly incurred -in consequence of a tran- 
sient gleam of prosperity embarrassed him for the rest of his life ; 
so that the success of the Good-natured Man may be said to 
have been ruinous to him. 

He was soon obliged to resume his old craft of book-building, 
and set about his History of Rome, undertaken for Davies. 

It was his custom, as we have shown, during the summer-time, 
when pressed by a multiplicity of literary jobs, or urged to the 



DEATH OF HENRY GOLDSMITH. 159 

accomplishment of some particular task, to take country lodgings 
a few miles from town, generally on the Harrow or Edgeware 
roads, and bury himself there for weeks and months together. 
Sometimes he would remain closely occupied in his room, at 
other times he would stroll out along the lanes and hedgerows, 
and taking out paper and pencil, note down thoughts to be ex- 
panded and connected at home. His summer retreat for the 
present year, 1768, was a little cottage with a garden, pleasantly 
situated about eight miles from town on the Edgeware road. He 
took it in conjunction with a Mr. Edmund Botts, a barrister and 
man of letters, his neighbor in the Temple, having rooms imme- 
diately opposite him on the same floor. They had become cordial 
intimates, and Botts was one of those with whom Goldsmith 
now and then took the friendly but pernicious liberty of borrow- 
ing. 

The cottage which they had hired belonged to a rich shoemaker 
of Piccadilly, who had embellished his little domain of half an 
acre with statues, and jets, and all the decorations of landscape 
gardening ; in consequence of which Goldsmith gave it the name 
of The Shoemaker's Paradise. As his fellow-occupant, Mr. 
Botts, drove a gig, he sometimes, in an interval of literary labor, 
accompanied him to town, partook of a social dinner there, and 
returned with him in the evening. On one occasion, when they 
had probably lingered too long at the table, they came near 
breaking their necks on their way homeward by driving against 
a post on the side-walk, while Botts was proving by the force of 
legal eloquence that they were in the very middle of the broad 
Edgeware road. 

In the course of this summer. Goldsmith's career of gayety was 
suddenly brought to a pause by intelligence of the death of his 
brother Henry, then but forty-five years of age. He had led a 
quiet and blameless life amid the scenes of his youth, fulfilling 
the duties of village pastor with unaffected piety ; conducting the 
school at Lissoy with a degree of industry and ability that gave 
it celebrity, and acquitting himself in all the duties of life with 



160 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

iindeviating rectitude and the mildest benevolence. How truly 
Goldsmith loved and venerated him is evident in all his letters 
and throughout his works ; in which his brother continually forms 
his model for an exemplification of all the most endearing of the 
Christian virtues ; yet his affection at his death was embittered 
by the fear that he died with some doubt upon his mind of the 
warmth of his affection. Goldsmith had been urged by his friends 
in Ireland, since his elevation in the world, to use his influence 
with the great, w^hich they supposed to be all-powerful, in favor 
of Henry, to obtain for him church-preferment. He did exert 
himself as far as his diffident nature would permit, but without 
success ; we have seen that, in the case of the Earl of Northum- 
berland, when, as Lord-Lieutenant of L'eland, that nobleman 
proffered him his patronage, he asked nothing for himself, but 
only spoke on behalf of his brother. Still some of his friends, 
ignorant of what he had done and of how little he was able 
to do, accused him of negligence. It is not likely, however, 
that his amiable and estimable brother joined in the accusa- 
tion. 

To the tender and melancholy recollections of his early days 
awakened by the death of this loved companion of his childhood, 
we may attribute some of the most heartfelt passages in his 
Deserted Village. Much of that poem we are told was composed 
this summer, in the course of solitary strolls about the green 
lanes and beautifully rural scenes of the neighborhood ; and thus 
much of the softness and sweetness of English landscape became 
blended with the ruder features of Lis^oy. It was in these lonely 
and subdued moments, when tender regret was half-mingled with 
self-upbraiding, that he poured forth that homage of the heart ren- 
dered as it were at the grave of his brother. The picture of the 
village pastor in this poem, which we have already hinted was taken 
in part from the character of his father, embodied likewise the 
recollections of his brother Henry ; for the natures of the father 
and son seem to have been identical. In the following lines, how- 
ever. Goldsmith evidently contrasted the quiet settled life of his 



TRIBUTE TO HIS BROTHER'S MEMORY. 161 

brother, passed at home in the benevolent exercise of the Christian 
duties, with his own restless vagrant career : — 

" Remote from towns he ran his godly race, 
Nor e'er had changed, nor wished to change his place." 

To us the whole character seems traced as it were in an expiatory- 
spirit ; as if, conscious of his own wandering restlessness, he 
sought to humble himself at the shrine of excellence which he had 
not been able to practise : — 

" At church with meek and unaffected grace, 
His looks adorn' d the venerable place ; 
Truth from his Hps prevail' d with double sway, 
And fools, who came to scoff, remain'd to pray. 
The service past, around the pious man, • 
With steady zeal, each honest rustic ran ; 
Even children follow' d, with endearing v^ile. 
And pluck'd his gown, to share the good man's smile : 
His ready smile a parent's warmth express'd, 
Their welfare pleas' d him, and their cares distress' d ; 
To them his heart, his love, his griefs were given, 
But all his serious thoughts had rest in heaven. 

***** 
And, as a bird each fond endearment tries 
To tempt its new-fledged offspring to the skies, 
He tried each art, reproved each dull delay. 
Allured to brighter worlds, and led the way.'''' 



CHAPTER XXV. 

In October Goldsmith returned to town and resumed his usual 
haunts. We hear of him at a dinner given by his countryman 
Isaac Bickerstaff, author of Love in a Village, Lionel and 
Clarissa, and other successful dramatic pieces. The dinner was 
to be followed by the reading by Bickerstaff of a new play. 
Among the guests was one Paul Hiffernan, likewise an Irishman ; 
somewhat idle and intemperate ; who lived nobody knew how nor 
where, sponging wherever he had a chance, and often of course 



162 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

upon Goldsmith, who was ever the vagabond's friend, or rather 
victim. Hiffernan was something of a physician, and elevated the 
emptiness of his purse into the dignity of a disease, which he 
termed impecuniosity, and against which he claimed a right to 
call for relief from the healthier purses of his friends. He was a 
scribbler for the newspapers, and latterly a dramatic critic, which 
had probably gained him an invitation to the dinner and reading. 
The wine and wassail, however, befogged his senses. Scarce had 
the author got into the second act of his play, when Hiffernan 
began to nod, and at length snored outright. Bickerstaff was 
embarrassed, but continued to read in a more elevated tone. The 
louder he read, the loader Hiffernan snored ; until the author 
came to a pause. " Never mind the brute, Bick, but go on," 
cried Goldsmith. "He would have served Homer just so if he 
were here and reading his own works." 

Kenrick, Goldsmith's old enemy, travestied this anecdote in the 
following lines, pretending that the poet had compared his country- 
man Bickerstaff to Homer. 

"What are your Bretons, Eomans, Grecians, 
Compared with thorough-bred Milesians ! 
Step into Griffin's shop, he'll tell ye 
Of Goldsmith, Bickerstaff, and Kelly . . . 
And, take one Irish evidence for t'other, 
Ev'n Homer's self is but their foster-brother." 

Johnbon was a rough consoler to a man when wincing under an 
attack of this kind. " Never mind, sir," said he to Goldsmith, 
when he saw that he felt the sting. *' A man whose business it is 
to be talked of is much helped by being attacked. Fame, sir, is 
a shuttlecock ; if it be struck only at one end of the room, it will 
soon fall to the ground ; to keep it up, it must be struck at both 
ends." 

Bickerstaff, at the time of which we are speaking, was in high 
vogue, the associate of the first wits of the day ; a few years 
afterwards he was obliged to fly the country to escape the 
punishment of an infamous crime. Johnson expressed great 



THE BLOOM-COLORED COAT. 163 

astonishment at hearing the offence for which he had fled. 
"Why, sir?" said Thrale; "he had long been a suspected man." 
Perhaps there was a knowing look on the part of the eminent 
brewer, which provoked a somewhat contemptuous reply. " By 
those who look close to the ground," said Johnson, " dirt will some- 
times be seen ; I hope I see things from a greater distance." 

We have already noticed the improvement, or rather the in- 
creased expense, of Goldsmith's wardrobe since his elevation into 
polite society. "He was fond," says one of his contemporaries, 
" of exhibiting his muscular little person in the gayest apparel 
of the day, to which was added a bag-wig and sword." Thus 
arrayed, he used to figure about in the sunshine in the Temple 
Gardens, much to his own satisfaction, but to the amusement of 
his acquaintances. 

Bos well, in his memoirs, has rendered one of his suits forever 
famous. That worthy, on the 16 th of October in this same year, 
gave a dinner to Johnson, Goldsmith, Eeynolds, Garrick, Murphy, 
Bickerstaff, and Davies. Goldsmith was generally apt to bustle 
in at the last moment, when the guests were taking their seats at 
table ; but on this occasion he was unusually early. While wait- 
ing for some lingerers to arrive, "he strutted about," says Bos- 
well, " bragging of his dress, and I believe was seriously vain of 
it, for his mind was undoubtedly prone to such impressions. 
*Come, come,' said Garrick, 'talk no more of that. You are 
perhaps the worst — eh, eh ? ' Goldsmith was eagerly attempt- 
ing to interrupt him, when Garrick went on, laughing ironically. 
* Nay, you will always look like a gentleman ; but I am talking 
of your being well or ill dressed.' ' Well, let me tell you,' said 
Goldsmith, ' when the tailor brought home my bloom-colored coat, 
he said, " Sir, I have a favor to beg of you ; when anybody asks 
you who made your clothes, be pleased to mention John Filby, at 
the Harrow, in Water Lane." ' ' Why, sir,' cried Johnson, ' that 
was because he knew the strange color would attract crowds to 
gaze at it, and thus they might hear of him, and see how well he 
could make a coat of so absurd a color.' " 



164 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

But though Goldsmith might permit this raillery on the part 
of his friends, he was quick to resent any personalities of the kind 
from strangers. As he was one day walking the Strand in grand 
array with bag-wig and sword, he excited the merriment of two 
coxcombs, one of whom called to the other to " look at that fly 
with a long pin stuck through it." Stung to the quick. Gold- 
smith's first retort was to caution the passers-by to be on their 
guard against "that brace of disguised pickpockets," — his next 
was to step into the middle of the street, where there was room 
for action, half-draw his sword, and beckon the joker, who was 
armed in like manner, to follow him. This was literally a w^ar of 
wit which the other had not anticipated. He had no inclination 
to push the joke to such an extreme, but abandoning the ground, 
sneaked off with his brother-wag amid the hootings of the 
spectators. 

This proneness to finery in dress, however, which Boswell and 
others of Goldsmith's contemporaries, who did not understand the 
secret plies of his character, attributed to vanity, arose, we are 
convinced, from a widely different motive. It was from a painful 
idea of his own personal defects, which had been cruelly stamped 
upon his mind in his boyhood, by the sneers and jeers of his play- 
mates, and had been grounded deeper into it by rude speeches 
made to him in every step of his struggling career, until it had 
become a constant cause of awkwardness and embarrassment. 
This he had experienced the more sensibly since his reputation 
had elevated him into polite society ; and he was constantly en- 
deavoring by the aid of dress to acqtiire that personal acce2:>tabil- 
ity, if we may use the phrase, which nature had denied him. If 
ever he betrayed a little self-complacency on first turning out in a 
new suit, it may, perhaps, have been because he felt as if he had 
achieved a triumph over his ugliness. 

There were circumstances too, about the time of which we are 
treating, which may have rendered Goldsmith more than usually 
attentive to his personal appearance. He had recently made the 
acquaintance of a most agreeable family from Devonshire, which 



THE HOBNECKS. 165 

he met at the house of his friend, Sir Joshua Reynolds. It con- 
sisted of Mrs. Horneck, widow of Captain Kane Horneck; two 
daughters, seventeen and nineteen years of age ; and an only son, 
Charles, tJie Captain in Lace, as his sisters playfully and some- 
what proudly called him, he having lately entered the Guards. 
The daughters are described as uncommonly beautiful, inteUigent, 
sprightly, and agreeable. Catharine, the eldest, went among her 
friends by the name of Little Comedy, indicative, very probably, 
of her disjDosition. She was engaged to William Henry Bunbury, 
second son of a Suflfolk baronet. The hand and heart of her sister 
Mary were yet unengaged, although she bore the by-name among 
her friends of the Jessamy Bride. This family was prepared, by 
their intimacy with Reynolds and his sister, to appreciate the 
merits of Goldsmith. The poet had always been a chosen friend 
of the eminent jDainter; and Miss Reynolds, as we have shown, 
ever since she had heard his poem of The Traveller read aloud, 
had ceased to consider him ugly. The Hornecks were equally 
capable of forgetting his person in admiring his works. On be- 
coming acquainted with him, too, they were delighted with his 
guileless simplicity, his buoyant good-nature, and his innate be- 
nevolence; and an enduring intimacy soon sprang up between 
them. For once poor Goldsmith had met with polite society, 
with which he was perfectly at home, and by which he was fully 
appreciated ; for once he had met with lovely women, to whom 
his ugly features were not repulsive. A proof of the easy and 
playful terms in which he was with them, remains in a whimsical 
epistle in verse, of which the following was the occasion. A 
dinner was to be given to their family by a Dr. Baker, a friend of 
their mother's, at which Reynolds and Angelica Kauffman were to 
be present. The young ladies were eager to have Goldsmith of 
the party, and their intimacy with Dr. Baker allowing them to 
take the liberty, they wrote a joint invitation to the poet at the 
last moment. It came too late, and drew from him the following 
reply; on the top of which was scrawled, "This is a poem! 
This is a copy of verses ! " 



166 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 



" Your mandate I got, 
You may all go to pot ; 
Had your senses been right, 
You'd have sent before night; 
So tell Horneck and Nesbitt, 
And Baker and his bit, 
And Kauffman beside, 
And the Jessamy Bride., 
With the rest of the crew, 
The Reynoldses too, 



Little Comedy'' s face, 
And the Captain in Lace., — 
Tell each other to rue 
Your Devonshire crew, 
For sending so late 
To one of my state. 
But 'tis Reynolds's way 
From wisdom to stray. 
And Angelica's whim 
To befrolic like him ; 



But alas ! your good worships, how could they be wiser, 
When both have been spoil' d in to-day's • Advertiser '? " i 

It has been intimated that the intimacy of poor Goldsmith 
with the Miss Hornecks, which began in so sprightly a vein, 
gradually assumed something of a more tender nature, and that 
he was not insensible to the fascinations of the younger sister. 
This may account for some of the phenomena which about this 
time appeared in his wardrobe and toilet. During the first year 
of his acquaintance with these lovely girls, the tell-tale book of 
his tailor, Mr. William Filby, displays entries of four or five full 
suits, besides separate articles of dress. Among the items we 
find a green half-trimmed frock and breeches, lined with silk ; 
a queen's-blue dress suit ; a half-dress suit of ratteen, lined with 
satin; a pair of silk stocking-breeches, and another pair of a 
bloom-color. Alas ! poor Goldsmith ! how much of this silken 
finery was dictated, not by vanity, but humble consciousness of 
thy defects ; how much of it was to atone for the uncouthness of 
thy person, and to win favor in the "eyes of the Jessamy Bride ! 

iTlie following lines had appeared in that day's "Advertiser," on the 
portrait of Sir Joshua by Angelica Kauffman : — 

"While fair Angelica, with matchless grace, 
Paints Conway's burly form and Stanhope's face: 
Our hearts to beauty willing homage pay, 
We praise, admire, and gaze our souls away. 
But when the likeness she hath done for thee, 
O Reynolds ! with astonishment we see, 
Forced to submit, with all our pride we own. 
Such strength, such harmony, excelled by none, 
And thou art rivalled by thyself alone." 



THE ROMAN HISTORY. 167 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

In the winter of 1768-69 Goldsmith occupied himself at his 
quarters in the Temple, slowly "building up" his Roman His- 
tory. We have pleasant views of him in this learned and half- 
cloistered retreat of wits and lawyers and legal students, in the 
reminiscences of Judge Day of the Irish Bench, who, in his ad- 
vanced age, delighted to recall the days of his youth, when he was 
a Templar, and to speak of the kindness with which he and his 
fellow-student, Grattan, were treated by the poet. " I was just 
arrived from college," said he, "full freighted with academic 
gleanings, and our author did not disdain to receive from me 
some opinions and hints towards his Greek and Roman histories. 
Being then a young man, I felt much flattered by the notice of 
so celebrated a person. He took great delight in the conversation 
of Grattan, whose brilliancy in the morning of life furnished full 
earnest of the unrivalled splendor which awaited his meridian ; 
and finding us dwelling together in Essex Court, near himself, 
where he frequently visited my immortal friend, his warm heart 
became naturally prepossessed towards the associate of one whom 
he so much admired." 

The Judge goes on, in his reminiscences, to give a picture of 
Goldsmith's social habits, similar in style to those already fur- 
nished. He frequented much the Grecian Coffee-House, then the 
favorite resort of the Irish and Lancashire Templars. He de- 
lighted in collecting his friends around him at evening parties at 
his chambers, where he entertained them with a cordial and un- 
ostentatious hospitality. "Occasionally," adds the Judge, "he 
amused them with his flute, or with whist, neither of which 
he played well, particularly the latter, but, on losing his money, he 
never lost his temper. In a run of bad luck and worse play, he 
would fling his cards upon the floor and exclaim, ' Byefore George, 
I ought forever to renounce thee, fickle, faithless fortune.' " 

The Judge was aware, at the time, that all the learned labor 



168 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

of poor Goldsmith upon his Roman History was mere hack-work 
to recruit his exhausted finances. " His purse replenished," adds 
he, " by labors of this kind, the season of relaxation and pleasure 
took its turn, in attending the theatres, Ranelagh, Vauxhall, and 
other scenes of gayety and amusement. Whenever his funds were 
dissipated, — and they fled more rapidly from being the dupe of 
many artful persons, male and female, who practised upon his 
benevolence, — he returned to his literary labors, and shut himself 
up from society to provide fresh matter for his bookseller, and 
fresh supplies for himself." 

How completely had the young student discerned the charac- 
teristics of poor, genial, generous, drudging, holiday-loving Gold- 
smith ; toiling, that he might play ; earning his bread by the 
sweat of his brains, and then throwing it out of the window. 

The Roman History was pubhshed in the middle of May, in 
two volumes of five hundred pages each. It was brought out 
without parade or pretension, and was announced as for the use 
of schools and colleges ; but, though a work written for bread, 
not fame, such is its ease, perspicuity, good sense, and the de- 
lightful simplicity of its style, that it was well received by the 
critics, commanded a prompt and extensive sale, and has ever 
since remained in the hands of young and old. 

Johnson, who, as we have before remarked, rarely praised or 
dispraised things by halves, broke forth in a warm eulogy of the 
author and the work, in a conversation with Boswell, to the great 
astonishment of the latter. "Whether we take Goldsmith," said 
he, " as a poet, as a comic writer, ou as an historian, he stands 
in the first class." Boswell. — " An historian ! My dear sir, 
you surely will not rank his compilation of the Roman History 
with the works of other historians of this age." Johnson. — 
" Why, who are before him ? " Boswell. — " Hume — Robertson 
— Lord Lyttelton." Johnson (his antipathy against the Scotch 
beginning to rise). — "I have not read Hume ; but doubtless 
Goldsmith's History is better than the verbiage of Robertson, 
or the foppery of Dalrymple." Boswell. — " Will you not admit 



''HISTORY OF ANIMATED NATURE.'' 169 

the superiority of Robertson, in whose history we find such pene- 
tration, such painting?" Johnson. — "Sir, you must consider 
how that penetration and that painting are employed. It is not 
history, it is imagination. He who describes what he never saw, 
draws from fancy. Robertson paints minds as Sir Joshua paints 
faces, in a history-piece ; . he imagines an heroic countenance. 
You must look upon Robertson's work as romance, and try it by 
that standard. History it is not. Besides, sir, it is the great 
excellence of a writer to put into his book as much as his book 
will hold. Goldsmith has done this in his History. Now 
Robertson might have put twice as much in his book. Robert- 
son is like a man who has packed gold in wool ; the wool takes 
up more room than the gold. No, sir, I always thought Robert- 
son would be crushed with his own weight — would be buried 
under his own ornaments. Goldsmith tells you shortly all you 
want to know; Robertson detains you a great deal too long. 
No man will read Robertson's cumbrous detail a second time ; 
but Goldsmith's plain narrative will please again and again. I 
would say to Robertson what an old tutor of a college said to one 
of his pupils, '^Read over your compositions, and whenever you 
meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike 
it out ! ' Goldsmith's abridgment is better than that of Lucius 
Florus or Eutropius ; and I will venture to say, that, if you com- 
pare him with Yertot in the same places of the Roman History, 
you will find that he excels Yertot. Sir, he has the art of com- 
piling, and of saying everything he has to say in a pleasing 
manner. He is now writing a Natural History, and will make 
it as entertaining as a Persian tale." 

The Natural History to which Johnson alluded was the 
History of Animated Nature, which Goldsmith commenced in 
1769, under an engagement with Grifiin, the bookseller, to com- 
plete it as soon as possible in eight volumes, each containing 
upwards of four hundred pages, in pica ; a hundred guineas to be 
paid to the author on the delivery of each volume in manuscript. 

He was induced to engage in this work by the urgent so- 



170 . OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

licitations of the booksellers, who had been struck by the sterling 
merits and captivating style of an introduction which he 
wrote to Brookes's Natural History. It was Goldsmith's in- 
tention originally to make a translation of Pliny, with a popular 
commentary ; but the appearance of Buffon's work induced him to 
change his plan, and make use of that author for a guide and 
model. 

Cumberland, speaking of this work, observes : " Distress drove 
Goldsmith upon undertakings neither congenial with his studies 
nor worthy of his talents. I remember him when, in his chambers 
in the Temple, he showed me the beginning of his Animated 
Nature; it was with a sigh, such as genius draws when hard 
necessity diverts it from its bent to drudge for bread, and talk of 
birds, and beasts, and creeping things, which Pidock's showman 
would have done as well. Poor fellow, he hardly knows an ass 
from a mule, nor a turkey from a goose, but when he sees it on 
the table." 

Others of Goldsmith's friends entertained similar ideas with 
respect to his fitness for the task, and they were apt now and 
then to banter him on the subject, and to amuse themselves with 
his easy credulity. The custom among the natives of Otaheite 
of eating dogs being once mentioned in company. Goldsmith ob- 
served that a similar custom prevailed in China ; that a dog- 
butcher is as common there as any other butcher ; and that, when 
he walks abroad, all the dogs fall on him. Johnson. — " That 
is not owing to his killing dogs ; sir, I remember a butcher at 
Litchfield, whom a dog that was in the house where I lived 
always attacked. It is the smell of carnage which provokes this, 
let the animals he has killed be -what they may." Goldsmith. — 
" Yes, there is a general abhorrence in animals at the signs of 
massacre. If you put a tub full of blood into a stable, the horses 
are likely to go mad." Johnson. — "I doubt that." Gold- 
smith. — "Nay, sir, it is a fact well authenticated." Thrale. — 
" You had better prove it before you put it into your book on 
Natural History. You may do it in my stable if you will." 



TEMPLE BOOKEBY. 171 

Johnson. — " Nay, sir, I would not have him prove it. If he 
is content to take his information from others, he may get through 
his book with little trouble, and without much endangering his 
reputation. But if he makes experiments for so comprehensive 
a book as his, there would be no end to them ; his erroneous as- 
sertions would fall then upon himself; and he might be blamed 
for not having made experiments as to every particular." 

Johnson's original prediction, however, with respect to this 
work, that Goldsmith would make it as entertaining as a Persian 
tale, was verified, and though much of it was borrowed from 
Buffon, and but little of it written from his own observation, — 
though it was by no means profound, and was chargeable with 
many errors, yet the charms of his style and the play of his happy 
disposition throughout have continued to render it far more 
popular and readable than many works on the subject of much 
greater scope and science. Cumberland was mistaken, however, in 
his notion of Goldsmith's ignorance and lack of observation as to 
the characteristics of animals. On the contrary, he was a minute 
and shrewd observer of them ; but he observed them with the 
eye of a poet and moralist as well as a naturalist. We quote 
two passages from his works illustrative of this fact, and we do 
so the more readily because they are in a manner a part of his 
history, and give us another peep into his private life in the 
Temple, — of his mode of occupying himself in his lonely and 
apparently idle moments, and of another class of acquaintances 
which he made there. 

Speaking in his Animated Nature of the habitudes of Rooks, 
"I have often amused myself," says he, "with observing their 
plans of policy from my window in the Temple, that looks upon a 
grove, where they have made a colony in the midst of a city. At 
the commencement of spring the rookery, which during the con- 
tinuance of winter seemed to have been deserted, or only guarded 
by about five or six, like old soldiers in a garrison, now begins to 
be once more frequented, and in a short time all the bustle and 
hurry of business will be fairly commenced." 



172 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

The other passage, which we take the liberty to quote at some 
length, is from an admirable paper in the Bee, and relates to the 
House Spider. 

" Of all the solitary insects I have ever remarked, the spider is the 
most sagacious, and its motions to me, who have attentively con- 
sidered them, seem almost to exceed belief. ... I perceived, about 
four years ago, a large spider in one corner of my room making its 
web ; and, though the maid frequently levelled her broom against the 
labors of the little animal, I had the good fortune then to prevent its 
destruction, and I may say it more than paid me by the entertainment 
it afforded. 

"In three days the web was, with incredible diligence, completed; 
nor could I avoid thinking that the insect seemed to exult in its new 
abode. It frequently traversed it round, examined the strength of 
every part of it, retired into its hole, and came out very frequently. 
The first enemy, however, it had to encounter was another and a much 
larger spider, which, having no web of its own, and having probably 
exhausted all its stock in former labors of this kind, came to invade 
the property of its. neighbor. Soon, then, a terrible encounter ensued, 
in which the invader seemed to have the victory, and the laborious 
spider was obliged to take refuge in its hole. Upon this I perceived 
the victor using every art to draw the enemy from its stronghold. He 
seemed to go off, but quickly returned ; and when he found all arts in 
vain, began to demolish the new web without mercy. This brought 
on another battle, and, contrary to my expectations, the laborious 
spider became conqueror, and fairly killed his antagonist. 

"Now, then, in peaceable possession of what was justly its own, it 
waited three days with the utmost impatience, repairing the breaches 
of its web, and taking no sustenance that I could perceive. At last, 
however, a large blue fly fell into the snaare, and struggled hard to get 
loose. The spider gave it leave to entangle itself as much as possible, 
but it seemed to be too strong for the cobweb. I must own I was 
greatly surprised when I saw the spider immediately sally out, and in 
less than a minute weave a new net round its captive, by which the 
motion of its wings was stopped ; and, when it was fairly hampered 
in this manner, it was seized and dragged into the hole. 

" In this manner it lived, in a precarious state ; and Nature seemed 
to have fitted it for such a life, for upon a single fly it subsisted for 
more than a week. I once put a wasp into the net ; but when the 
spider came out in order to seize it as usual, upon perceiving what 



ANECDOTES OF A SPIDER. 173 

kind of an enemy it had to deal with, it instantly broke all the bands 
that held it fast, and contributed all that lay in its power to disengage 
so formidable an antagonist. When the wasp was set at liberty, I 
expected the spider would have set about repairing the breaches that 
were made in its net ; but those, it seems, were irreparable ; where- 
fore the cobweb was now entirely forsaken, and a new one begun, 
which was completed in the usual time. 

" I had now a mind to try how many cobwebs a single spider could 
furnish ; wherefore I destroyed this, and the insect set about another. 
When I destroyed the other also, its whole stock seemed entirely 
exhausted, and it could spin no more. The arts it made use of to 
support itself, now deprived of its great means of subsistence, were 
indeed surprising. I have seen it roll up its legs like a ball, and lie 
motionless for hours together, but cautiously watching all the time ; 
when a fly happened to approach sufficiently near, it would dart out 
all at once, and often seize its prey. 

"Of this life, however, it soon began to grow weary, .and resolved 
to invade the possession of some other spider, since it could not make 
a web of its own. It formed an attack upon a neighboring forti- 
fication with great vigor, and at first was as vigorously repulsed. Not 
daunted, however, with one defeat, in this manner it continued to lay 
siege to another's web for three days, and at length, having killed the 
defendant, actually took possession. When smaller flies happen to 
fall into the snare, the spider does not sally out at once, but very 
patiently waits till it is sure of them; for, upon his immediately 
approaching, the terror of his appearance- might give the captive 
strength sufficient to get loose ; the manner, then, is to wait patiently, 
till, by ineffectual and impotent struggles, the captive has wasted all its 
strength, and then he becomes a certain and easy conquest. 

"The insect I am now describing lived three years ; every year it 
changed its skin and got a new set of legs. I have sometimes plucked 
off a leg, which grew again in two or three days. At first it dreaded 
my approach to its web, but at last it became so familiar as to take a 
fly out of ray hand ; and, upon my touching any part of the web, 
would immediately leave its hole, prepared either for a defence or an 
attack." 



174 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

The latter part of the year 1768 had been made memorable in 
the world of taste by the institution of the Royal Academy of 
Arts, under the patronage of the King, and the direction of forty 
of the most distinguished artists. Reynolds, who had been 
mainly instrumental in founding it, had been unanimously elected 
president, and had thereupon received the honor of knighthood.-^ 
Johnson was so delighted with his friend's elevation, that he broke 
through a rule of total abstinence with respect to wine, which he 
had maintained for several years, and drank bumpers on the occa- 
sion. Sir Joshua eagerly sought to associate his old and valued 
friends with him in his new honors, and it is supposed to be 
through his suggestions that, on the first establishment of professor- 
ships, which took place in December, 1769, Johnson was nomi- 
nated to that of Ancient Literature, and Goldsmith to that of 
History. They were mere honorary titles, without emolument, 
but gave distinction, from the noble institution to which they 
appertained. They also gave the possessors honorable places at 
the annual banquet, at which were assembled many of the most 
distinguished persons of rank and talent, all proud to be classed 
among the patrons of the arts. 

The following letter of Goldsmith to his brother alludes to the 
foregoing appointment, and to a small legacy bequeathed to him 
by his uncle Contarine. 

'To Mr. Maurice Goldsmith, at James Lawder^s, Esq., at Kilmore, 
near Carrick-on- Shannon. 

"January, 1770. 
" Dear Bkother, — I should have answered your letter sooner, but, 
in truth, I am not fond of thinking of the necessities of those I love, 

1 We must apologize for the anachronism we have permitted ourselves 
in the course of this memoir, in speaking of Keynolds as Sir Joshua, when 
treating of circumstances which occurred prior to his being dubbed ; but 
it is so customary to speak of him by that title, that we found it difficult 
to dispense with it. 



LETTER TO MAUBICE GOLDSMITH. 175 

when it is so very little in my power to help them. I am sorry to find 
you are every way unprovided for ; and what adds to my uneasiness is, 
that I iiave received a letter from my sister Johnson, by which I learn 
that she is pretty much in the same circumstances. As to myself, I 
believe I think I could get both you and my poor brother-in-law some- 
thing like that which you desire, but I am determined never to ask for 
little things, nor exhaust any little interest I may have, until I can 
serve you, him, and myself more effectually. As yet, no opportunity 
has offered ; but I believe you are pretty well convinced that I will not 
be remiss when it arrives. 

" The King has lately been pleased to make me professor of Ancient 
History in the royal academy of painting which he has just established, 
but there is no salary annexed ; and I took it rather as a compliment 
to the Institution than any benefit to myself. Honors to one in my 
situation are something like ruffles to one that wants a shirt. 

" You tell me that there are fourteen or fifteen pounds left me in 
the hands of my cousin Lawder, and you ask me what I would have 
done with them. My dear brother, I would by no means give any 
directions to my dear worthy relations at Kilmore how to dispose of 
money which is, properly speaking, more theirs than mine. All that 
I can say is, that I entirely, and this letter will serve to witness, give 
up any right and title to it ; and I am sure they will dispose of it to 
the best advantage. To them I entirely leave it ; whether they or 
you may think the whole necessary to fit you out, or whether our poor 
sister Johnson may not want the half, I leave entirely to their and 
your discretion. The kindness of that good couple to our shattered 
family demands our sincerest gratitude ; and, though they have almost 
forgotten me, yet, if good things at last arrive, I hope one day to 
return and increase their good-humor by adding to my own. 

"I have sent my cousin Jenny a miniature picture of myself, as I 
believe it is the most acceptable present I can offer. I have ordered it 
to be left for her at George Eaulkner's, folded in a letter. The face, 
you well know, is ugly enough, but it is finely painted. I will shortly 
also send my friends over the Shannon some mezzotinto prints of my- 
self, and some more of my friends here, such as Burke, Johnson, Rey- 
nolds, and Colman. I believe I have written a hundred letters to 
different friends in your country, and never received an answer to any 
of them. I do not know how to account for this, or why they are un- 
willing to keep up for me those regards which I must ever retain for 
them . 

" If, then, you. have a mind to oblige me, you will write often, 



176 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

whether I answer you or not. Let me particularly have the news of 
our family and old acquaintances. For instance, you may begin by 
telling me about the family where you reside, how they spend their 
time, and whether they ever make mention of me. Tell me about my 
mother, my brother Hodson and his son, my brother Harry's son and 
daughter, my sister Johnson, the family of Bally oughter, what is 
become of them, where they live, and how they do. You talked of 
being my only brother : I don't understand you. Where is Charles ? 
A sheet of paper occasionally filled with the news of this kind would 
make me very happy, and would keep you nearer my mind. As it is, 
my dear brother, believe me to be 

" Yours, most affectionately, 

"Oliver Goldsmith." 

By this letter we find the Goldsmiths the same shifting, shift- 
less race as formerly; a "shattered family," scrambling on each 
other's back as soon as any rise above the surface. Maurice is 
" every way unprovided for " ; living upon cousin Jane and her 
husband ; and, perhaps, amusing himself by hunting otter in the 
river Inny. Sister Johnson and her husband are as poorly off as 
Maurice, with, perhaps, no one at hand to quarter themselves 
upon ; as to the rest, " what is become of them 1 where do they 
live ? and how do they do 1 what has become of Charles 1 " What 
forlorn, hap-hazard life is implied by these questions ! Can we 
wonder that, with all the love for his native place, which is shown 
throughout Goldsmith's writings, he had not the heart to return 
there? Yet his affections are still there. He wishes to know 
whether the Lawders (which means his cousin Jane, his early Val- 
entine) ever made mention of him; he*sends Jane his miniature; 
he believes "it is the most acceptable present he can offer"; he 
evidently, therefore, does not believe she has almost forgotten him, 
although he intimates that he does : in his memory she is still 
Jane Contarine, as he last saw her, when he accompanied her 
harpsichord with his flute. Absence, like death, sets a seal on 
the image of those we have loved ; we cannot realize the interven- 
ing changes which time may have effected. 

As to the rest of Goldsmith's relatives, he abandons his legacy 



GOLDSMITH'S PORTRAIT. 177 

of fifteen pounds, to be shared among them. It is all he has to 
give. His heedless improvidence is eating up the pay of the book- 
sellers in advance. With all his literary success, he has neither 
money nor influence ; but he has empty fame, and he is ready to 
participate with them ; he is honorary professor, without pay ; his 
portrait is to be engraved in mezzotint, in company with those 
of his friends, Burke, Reynolds, Johnson, Colman, and others, and 
he will send prints of them to his friends over the Channel, though 
they may not have a house to hang them up in. What a motley 
letter ! How indicative of the motley character of the writer ! 
By the by, the publication of a splendid mezzotinto engraving of 
his likeness by Reynolds was a great matter of glorification to 
Goldsmith, especially as it appeared in such illustrious company. 
As he was one day walking the streets in a state of high elation, 
from having just seen it figuring in the print-shop windows, he 
met a young gentleman with a newly married wife hanging on his 
arm, whom he immediately recognized for Master Bishop, one 
of the boys he had petted and treated with sweetmeats when a 
humble usher at Milner's school. The kindly feelings of old times 
revived, and he accosted him with cordial familiarity, though the 
youth may have found some difficulty in recognizing in the person- 
age, arrayed, perhaps, in garments of Tyrian dye, the dingy peda- 
gogue of the Milners. " Come, my boy," cried Goldsmith, as if 
still speaking to a school-boy, — " come, Sam, I am delighted to 
see you. I must treat you to something — what shall it be? 
Will you have some apples ? " glancing at an old woman's stall ; 
then, recollecting the print-shop window: "Sam," said he, "have 
you seen my picture by Sir Joshua Reynolds ? Have you seen it, 
Sam ? Have you got an engraving ? " Bishop was caught ; he 
equivocated ; he had not yet bought it ; but he was furnishing his 
house, and had fixed upon the place where it was to be hung. 
"Ah, Sam!" rejoined Goldsmith reproachfully, "if your picture 
had been published, I should not have waited an hour without 
having it." 

After all, it was honest pride, not vanity, in Goldsmith, that 



178 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

was gratified at seeing his portrait deemed worthy of being per- 
petuated by the classic pencil of Reynolds, and "hung up in his- 
tory " beside that of his revered friend Johnson. Even the great 
moralist himself was not insensible to a feeling of this kind. 
Walking one day with Goldsmith, in Westminster Abbey, among 
the tombs of monarchs, warriors, and statesmen, they came to the 
sculptured mementoes of literary worthies in Poets' Corner. Cast- 
ing his eye round upon these memorials of genius, Johnson mut- 
tered in a low tone to his companion, — 

"Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur istis." 

Goldsmith treasured up the intimated hope, and shortly after- 
wards, as they were passing by Temple Bar, where the heads of 
Jacobite rebels, executed for treason, were mouldering aloft on 
spikes, pointed up to the grizzly mementoes, and echoed the inti- 
mation, 

" Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur istis.'''' 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 

Several years had now elapsed since the publication of The 
Traveller, and much wonder was expressed that the great success 
of that poem had not excited the author to further poetic attempts. 
On being questioned at the annual dinner of the Royal Academy 
by the Earl of Lisburn, why he neglected the Muses to compile 
histories and write novels, "My Lord,'* replied he, "by courting 
the Muses I shall starve, but by my other labors I eat, drink, 
have good clothes, and can enjpy the luxuries of life." So, also, 
on being asked by a poor writer what was the most profitable 
mode of exercising the pen, — " My dear fellow," replied he, good- 
humoredly, " pay no regard to the draggle-tailed Muses ; for my 
part I have found productions in prose much more sought after 
and better paid for." 

Still, however, as we have heretofore shown, he found sweet 
moments of dalliance to steal away from his prosaic toils, and 



THE "-DESERTED VILLAGE.'' 179 

court the Muse among the green lanes and hedge-rows in the rural 
environs of London, and on the 26th of May, 1770, he was enabled 
to bring his Deserted Village before the public. 

The popularity of The Traveller had prepared the way for this 
poem, and its sale was instantaneous and immense. The first 
edition was immediately exhausted ; in a few days a second was 
issued; in a few days more a third, and by the 16th of August 
the fifth edition was hurried through the press. As is the case 
with popular writers, he had become his own rival, and critics 
were inclined to give the preference to his first poem ; but with 
the public at large we believe the Deserted Village has ever 
been the greatest favorite. Previous to its publication the book- 
seller gave him in advance a note for the price agreed upon, one 
hundred guineas. As the latter was returning home he met a 
friend to whom he mentioned the circumstance, and who, appar- 
ently judging of poetry by quantity rather than quality, observed 
that it was a great sum for so small a poem. " In truth," said 
Goldsmith, " I think so too ; it is much more than the honest 
man can afford or the piece is worth. I have not been easy since 
I received it." In fact, he actually returned the note to the book- 
seller, and left it to him to graduate the payment according to the 
success of the work. The bookseller, as may well be supposed, 
soon repaid him in full with many acknowledgments of his disin- 
terestedness. This anecdote has been called in question, we know 
not on what grounds ; we see nothing in it incompatible with the 
character of Goldsmith, who was very impulsive, and prone to acts 
of inconsiderate generosity. 

As we do not pretend in this summary memoir to go into a 
criticism, or analysis of any of Goldsmith's writings, we shall not 
dwell upon the peculiar merits of this poem ; we cannot help 
noticing, however, how truly it is a mirror of tlie author's heart, 
and of all the fond pictures of early friends and early life forever 
present there. It seems to us as if the very last accounts re- 
ceived from home, of his " shattered family," and the desolation 
that seemed to have settled upon the haunts of his childhood, had 



180 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

cut the roots of one feebly cherished hope, and produced the fol- 
lowing exquisitely tender and mournful lines : — 

" In all my wand' rings round this world of care, 
In all my griefs — and God has giv'n my share — 
I still had hopes my latest hours to crown. 
Amid these humble bowers to lay me down ; 
To husband out life's taper at the close, 
And keep the flame from wasting by repose ; 
I still had hopes, for pride attends us still, 
Amid the swains to show my book-learn' d skill, 
Around my fire an ev'ning group to draw, 
And tell of all I felt and all I saw ; 
And as a hare, whom hounds and horns pursue, 
Pants to the place from whence at first she flew ; 
I still had hopes, my long vexations past. 
Here to return — and die at home atlast.''^ 

How touchingly expressive are the succeeding lines, wrung from 
a heart which all the trials and temptations and butfetings of the 
world could not render worldly ; which, amid a thousand follies 
and errors of the head, still retained its childlike innocence ; and 
which, doomed to struggle on to the last amidst the din and tur- 
moil of the metropolis, had ever been cheating itself with a dream 
of rural quiet and seclusion : — 

" Oh bless'd retirement ! friend to life's decline, 
Eetreats from care, that never must be mine, 
How blest is he who crowns, in shades like tiiese, 
A youth of labor with an age of ease ; 
Who quits a world where strong temptations try, 
And, since 'tis hard to combat, learns to fly ! 
For him no wretches, born to work and weep. 
Explore the mine, or tempt the dangerous deep ; 
Nor surly porter stands, in guilty state, 
To spurn imploring famine from the gate ; 
But on he moves to meet his latter end. 
Angels around befriending virtue's friend ; 
Sinks to the grave with unperceived decay. 
While resignation gently slopes the way ; 
And all his prospects brightening to the last. 
His heaven commences ere the world be past." 



NOTICE OF POEM. 181 



NOTE. 



The following article, which appeared in a London periodical, 
shows the effect of Goldsmith's poem in renovating the fortunes of 
Lissoy. 

" About three miles from Ballymahon, a very central town in 
the sister-kingdom, is the mansion and village of Auburn, so called 
by their present possessor. Captain Hogan. Through the taste 
and improvement of this gentleman, it is now a beautiful spot, al- 
though fifteen years since it presented a very bare and unpoetical 
aspect. This, however, was owing to a cause which serves 
strongly to corroborate the assertion, that Goldsmith had this 
scene in view when he wrote his poem of The Deserted Village. 
The then possessor. General Napier, turned all his tenants out 
of their farms that he might enclose them in his own private 
domain. Littleton, the mansion of the General, stands not far off, 
a complete emblem of the desolating spirit lamented by the poet, 
dilapidated and converted into a barrack. 

• " The chief object of attraction is Lissoy, once the parson- 
age-house of Henry Goldsmith, that brother to whom the poet 
dedicated his Traveller, and who is represented as a village pastor, 

" ' Passing rich with forty pounds a year.' 

" When I was in the country, the lower chambers were inhab- 
ited by pigs and sheep, and the drawing-rooms by goats. Captain 
Hogan, however, has, I believe, got it since into his possession, 
and has, of course, improved its condition. 

" Though at first strongly inclined to dispute the identity of 
Auburn, Lissoy House overcame my scruples. As I clambered 
over the rotten gate, and crossed the grass-grown lawn or court, 
the tide of association became too strong for casuistry : here the 
poet dwelt and wrote, and here his thoughts fondly recurred 
when composing his Traveller in a foreign land. Yonder was the 
decent church, that literally ' topped the neighboring hill.' Before 
me lay the little hill of Knockrue, on which he declares, in one 



182 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

of his letters, he had rather sit with a book in hand than mingle 
in the proudest assemblies. And, above all, startlingly true, be- 
neath my feet was 

" ' Yonder copse, where once the garden smiled, 
And still where many a garden-flower grows wild. ' 

"A painting from the life could not be more exact. ' The stub- 
born currant-bush ' lifts its head above the rank grass, and the proud 
hollyhock flaunts where its sisters of the flower-knot are no more. 

"In the middle of the village stands the old 'hawthorn-tree,' 
built up with masonry to distinguish and preserve it ; it is old 
and stunted, and suffers much from the depredations of post-chaise 
travellers, who generally stop to procure a twig. Opposite to it is 
the village ale-house, over the door of which swings ' The Three 
Jolly Pigeons.' Within, everything is arranged according to 
the letter : — 

" ' The whitewash'd wall, the nicely-sanded floor, 
The varnish'd clock that click'd behind the door: 
The chest, contrived a double debt to pay, 
A bed by night, a chest of drawers by day ; 
Tlie pictures placed for ornament and use, 
The twelve good rules, the royal game of goose.' 

"Captain Hogan, I have heard, found great difficulty in ob- 
taining ' the twelve good rules,' but at length purchased them at 
some London book-stall to adorn the whitewashed parlor of ' The 
Three Jolly Pigeons.' However laudable this may be, nothing 
shook my faith in the reality of Auburn so much as this exactness, 
which had the disagreeable air of being got up for the occasion. 
The last object of pilgrimage is the quondam habitation of the 
schoolmaster, 

" ' There, in his noisy mansion, skill' d to rule.' 
It is surrounded with fragrant proofs of identity in 

" 'The blossom'd furze, unprofitably gay.' 

There is to be seen the chair of the poet, which fell into the hands 
of its present possessors at the wreck of the parsonage-house; they 



IDENTITY OF AUBURN. 183 

have frequently refused large offers of purchase ; but more, I dare 
say, for the sake of drawing contributions from the curious than 
from any reverence for the bard. The chair is of oak, with back 
and seat of cane, which precluded all hopes of a secret drawer, like 
that lately discovered in Gay's. There is no fear of its being worn 
out by the devout earnestness of sitters — as the cocks and hens 
have usurped undisputed possession of it, and protest most clamor- 
ously against all attempts to get it cleansed or to seat one's self. 

" The controversy concerning the identity of this Auburn was 
formerly a standing theme of discussion among the learned of the 
neighborhood ; but, since the pros and cons have been all ascer- 
tained, the argument has died away. Its abettors plead the sin- 
gular agreement between the local history of the place and the 
Auburn of the poem, and the exactness with which the scenery of 
the one answers to the description of the other. To this is opposed 
the mention of the nightingale, 

" ' And fill'd each pause the nightingale had made ; ' 

there being no such bird in the island. The objection is slighted, 
on the other hand, by considering the passage as a mere poetical 
license. 'Besides,' say they, 'the robin is the Irish nightingale.' 
And if it be hinted how unlikely it was that Goldsmith should 
have laid the scene in a place from which he was and had been so 
long absent, the rejoinder is always, 'Pray, sir, was Milton in hell 
when he built Pandemonium '? ' 

" The line is naturally drawn between ; there can be no doubt 
that the poet intended England by 

" 'The land to hast'ning ills a prey, 
Where wealth accumulates and men decay.' 

But it is very natural to suppose that, at the same time, his im- 
agination had in view the scenes of his youth, which give such strong 
features of resemblance to the picture." 

Best, an Irish clergyman, told Davis, the traveller in America, 
that the hawthorn-bush mentioned in the poem was still remark- 



184 OLIVEB GOLDSMITH. 

ably large. "I was riding once," said he, "with Brady, titular 
Bishop of Ardagh, when he observed to me, ' Ma foy, Best, this 
huge overgrown bush is mightily in the way. I will order it to be 
cut down.' — ' What, sir ! ' replied I, * cut down the bush that 
suf)plies so beautiful an image in The Deserted Village V — ' Ma 
foy ! ' exclaimed the bishop, ' is that the hawthorn bush % Then 
let it be sacred from the edge of the axe, and evil be to him that 
should cut off a branch.'" — The hawthorn-bush, however, has 
long since been cut up, root and branch, in furnishing relics to 
literary pilgrims. 



CHAPTER XXIX. 

The Deserted Village had shed an additional poetic grace round 
the homely person of the -author ; he was becoming more and more 
acceptable in ladies' eyes, and finding himself more and more at 
ease in their society ; at least in the society of those whom he met 
in the Reynolds circle, among whom he particularly affected the 
beautiful family of the Hornecks. 

But let us see what were really the looks and manners of Gold- 
smith about this time, and what right he had to aspire to ladies' 
smiles ; and in so doing let us not take the sketches of Bos well 
and his compeers, who had a propensity to represent him in cari- 
cature ; but let us take the apparently truthful and discriminating 
picture of him as he appeared to Judg^ Day, when the latter was 
a student in the Temple. 

"In person," says the Judge, "he was short; about five feet 
five or six inches ; strong, but not hea\7- in make ; rather fair in 
complexion, with brown hair ; such, at least, as could be distin- 
guished from his wig. His features were plain, but not repulsive, 
— certainly not so when lighted up by conversation. His manners 
were simple, natural, and perhaps on the whole, we may say, not 
polished ; at least without the refinement and good-breeding which 
the exquisite polish of his compositions would lead us to expect. 



EXPEDITION TO PARIS. 185 

He was always cheerful and animated, often, indeed, boisterous in 
his mirth ; entered with spirit into convivial society ; contributed 
largely to its enjoyments by solidity of information, and the naivety 
and originality of his character; talked often without premedi- 
tation, and laughed loudly without restraint." 

This, it will be recollected, represents him as he appeared to a 
young Templar, who probably saw him only in Temple coffee- 
houses, at students' quarters, or at the jovial supper-parties given 
at the poet's own chambers. Here, of course, his mind was in its 
rough dress ; his laugh may have been loud and his mirth boister- 
ous ; but we trust all these matters became softened and modified 
when he found himself in polite drawing-rooms and in female' 
society. 

But what say the ladies themselves of him ; and here fortu- 
nately, we have another sketch of him, as he appeared at the time 
to one of the Horneck circle ; in fact, we believe, to the Jessamy 
Bride herself. After admitting, apparently, with some reluctance, 
that "he was a very plain man," she goes on to say, "but had he 
been much more so, it was impossible not to love and respect his 
goodness of heart, which broke out on every occasion. His benevo- 
lence was unquestionable, and his countenance bore every trace 
of it : no one that knew him intimately could avoid admiring and 
loving his good qualities." When to all this we add the idea of 
intellectual delicacy and refinement associated with him by his 
poetry and the newly-plucked bays that were flourishing round his 
brow, we cannot be surprised that fine and fashionable ladies 
should be proud of his attentions, and that even a young beauty 
should not be altogether displeased with the thoughts of having a 
man of his genius in her chains. 

We are led to indulge some notions of the kind from finding 
him in the month of July, but a few weeks after the publication 
of the Deserted Tillage^ setting off on a six weeks' excursion to 
Paris, in company with Mrs. Horneck, and her two beautiful 
daughters. A day or two before his departure, we find another 
new gala suit charged to him on the books of Mr. William Filby. 



186 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

Were the bright eyes of the Jessamy Bride responsible for this 
additional extravagance of wardrobe? Goldsmith had recently 
been editing the works of Parnell ; had he taken courage from the 
example of Edwin in the Fairy tale ? — 

" Yet spite of all that nature did 
To make his. uncouth form forbid, 

This creature dared to love. 
He felt the force of Edith's eyes, 
Nor wanted hope to gain the prize 

Could ladies look within " 

All this we throw out as mere hints and surmises, leaving it to 
our readers to draw their own conclusions. It will be found, 
however, that the poet was subjected to shrewd bantering among 
his contemporaries about the beautiful Mary Horneck, and that he 
was extremely sensitive on the subject. 

It was in the month of June that he set out for Paris with his 
fair companions, and the following letter was written by him to 
Sir Joshua Reynolds, soon after the party landed at Calais. 

" My dear Friend, — 

" We had a very quick passage from Dover to Calais, which we 
performed in three hours and twenty minutes, all of us extremely sea- 
sick, which must necessarily have happened, as my machine to prevent 
sea-sickness was not completed. We were glad to leave Dover, be- 
cause we hated to be imposed upon ; so were in high spirits at coming 
to Calais, where we were told that a little money would go a great 
way. . 

"Upon landing, with two little trunks, which was all we carried 
with us, we were surprised to see fourteen or fifteen fellows all run- 
ning down to the ship to lay their 'hands upon them ; four got under 
each trunk, the rest surrounded and held the hasps ; and in this 
manner our little baggage was conducted, with a kind of funeral solem- 
nity, till it was safely lodged at the custom-house. We were well 
enough pleased with the people's civility till they came to be paid ; 
every creature that had the happiness of touching our trunks with 
their finger expected sixpence, and they had so pretty and civil a 
manner of demanding it, that there was no refusing them. 

" When we had done with the porters, we had next to speak with 



BOSWELVS ABSURD MISCONCEPTIONS. 187 

the custom-house officers, who had their pretty civil way too. We 
were directed to the H6tel d'Angleterre, where a valet-de-place came 
to offer his service, and spoke to me ten minutes before I once found 
out that he was speaking English. We had no occasion for his ser- 
vices, so we gave him a little money because he spoke English, and 
because he wanted it. I cannot heli3 mentioning another circum- 
stance : I bought a new riband for my wig at Canterbury, and the 
barber at Calais broke it in order to gain sixpence by buying me a 
new one." 

All incident which occurred in the course of this tour has been 
tortured by tliat literary magpie, Boswell, into a proof of Gold- 
smith's absurd jealousy of any admiration shown to others in his 
presence. While stopping at a hotel in Lisle, they were drawn to 
the windows by a military parade in front. The extreme beauty 
of the Miss Hornecks immediately attracted the attention of the 
officers, who broke forth with enthusiastic speeches and compli- 
ments intended for their ears. Goldsmith was amused for a while, 
but at length affected impatience at this exclusive admiration of 
his beautiful companions, and exclaimed, with mock severity of 
aspect, " Elsewhere I also would have my admirers." 

It is difficult to conceive the obtuseness of intellect necessary to 
misconstrue so obvious a piece of mock petulance and dry humor 
into an instance of mortified vanity and jealous self-conceit. 

Goldsmith jealous of the admiration of a group of gay officers 
for the charms of two beautiful young women ! This even out- 
Boswells Boswell : yet this is but one of several similar absurdi- 
ties, evidently misconceptions of Goldsmith's peculiar vein of 
humor, by which the charge of envious jealousy has been 
attempted to be fixed upon him. In the present instance it was 
contradicted by one of the ladies herself, who was annoyed that it 
had been advanced against him. " I am sure," said she, " from 
the peculiar manner of his humor, and assumed frown of counte- 
nance, what was often uttered in jest was mistaken, by those who 
did not know him, for earnest." No one was more prone to err on 
this point than Boswell. He had a tolerable perception of wit, 
but none of humor. 



188 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

The following letter to Sir Joshua Reynolds was subsequently- 
written. 

" To Sir Joshua Reynolds. 

"Paris, July 29, [1770.] 

" My dear Friend, — I began a long letter to you from Lisle, giving 
a description of all that we had done and seen, but, finding it very 
dull, and knowing that you would show it again, I threw it aside and 
it was lost. You see by the top of this letter that we are at Paris, and 
(as I have often heard you say) we have brought our own amusement 
with us, for the ladies do not seem to be very fond of what we have 
yet seen. 

" With regard to myself, I find that travelling at twenty and forty 
are very different things. I set out with all my confirmed habits about 
me, and can find nothing on the Continent so good as when I formerly 
left it. One of our chief amusements here is scolding at everything we 
meet with, and praising everything and every person we left at home. 
You may judge, therefore, whether your name is not frequently ban- 
died at table among us. To tell you the truth, I never thought I could 
regret your absence so much as our various mortifications on the road 
have often taught me to do. I could tell you of disasters and adven- 
tures without number ; of our lying in barns, and of my being half 
poisoned with a dish of green peas ; of our quarrelling with postilions, 
and being cheated by our landladies ; but I reserve all this for a happy 
hour which I expect to share with you upon my return. 

" I have little to tell you more, but that we are at present all well, 
and expect returning when wc have stayed out one month, which I did 
not care if it were over this very day. I long to hear from you all, 
how you yourself do, how Johnson, Burke, Dyer, Chamier, Colman, 
and every one of the club do. I wish I could send you some amuse- 
ment in this letter, but I protest I am so stupefied by the air of this 
country (for I am sure it cannot be natural) that I have not a word to 
say. I have been thinking of the plot of a comedy, which shall be 
entitled ' A Journey to Paris ' in which a family shall be introduced 
with a full intention of going to France to save money. You know 
there is not a place in the world more promising for that purpose. As 
for the meat of this country, I can scarce eat it ; and though we pay 
two good shillings a head for our dinner, I find it all so tough that I 
have spent less time with my knife than my picktooth. I said this as 
a good thing at the table, but it was not understood. I believe it to be 
a good thing. 



LETTER TO REYNOLDS. 189 

"As for our intended journey to Devonshire, I find it out of my 
power to perform it ; for, as soon as I arrive at Dover, I intend to let 
the ladies go on, and I will take a country-lodging somewhere near 
that place in order to do some business. I have so outrun the con- 
stable that I must mortify a little to bring it up again. For God's sake, 
the night you receive this take your pen in your hand and tell me 
something about yourself and myself, if you know anything that 
has happened. About Miss Eeynolds, about Mr. Bickerstaff, my 
nephew, or anybody that you regard. I beg you will send to Griffin 
the bookseller to know if there be any letters left for me, and be so 
good as to send them to me at Paris. They may perhaps be left for 
me at the Porter's Lodge, opposite the pump in Temple Lane. The 
same messenger will do. I expect one from Lord Clare, from Ireland. 
As for the others, I am not much uneasy about. 

" Is there anything I can do for you at Paris ? I wish you would 
tell me. The whole of my own purchases here is one silk coat, which 
I have put on, and which makes me look like a fool. But no more of 
that. I find that Colman has gained his lawsuit. I am glad of it. I 
suppose you often meet. I will soon be among you, better pleased 
with my situation at home than I ever was before. And yet I must 
say, that, if anything could make France pleasant, the very good 
woman with whom I am at present would certainly do it. I could say 
more about that, but I intend showing them the letter before I send it 
away. What signifies teasing you longer with moral observations, 
when the business of my writing is over ? I have one thing only more 
to say, and of that I think every hour in the day, namely, that I am 
your most sincere and most affectionate friend, 

"Oliver Goldsmith. 
"Direct to me at the Hotel de Danemarc, ^ 
Rue Jacob, Fauxbourg St. Germains." i 

A word of comment on this letter : — 

Travelling is, indeed, a very different thing with Goldsmith the 
poor student at twenty, and Goldsmith the poet and Professor at 
forty. At twenty, though obliged to trudge on foot from town to 
town, and country to country, paying for a supper and a bed by a 
tune on the flute, everything pleased, everything was good; a 
truckle-bed in a garret was a couch of down, and the homely fare 
of the peasant a feast fit for an epicure. Now, at forty, when he 
posts through the country in a carriage, with fair ladies by his 



190 OLIVER G0LB8MITR. 

side, everything goes wrong : he has to quarrel with postilions, he 
is cheated by landladies, the hotels are barns, the meat is too 
tough to be eaten, and he is half poisoned by green peas! A 
line in his letter explains the secret : "the ladies do not seem to 
be very fond of what we have seen." "One of our chief amuse- 
ments is scolding at everything we meet with, and praising every- 
thing and every person we have left at home ! " — the true English 
travelling amusement. Poor Goldsmith ! he has " all his con- 
firmed habits about him " ; that is to say, he has recently risen 
into high life, and acquired high-bred notions ; he must be fastid- 
ious like his fellow-travellers ; he dare not be pleased with what 
pleased the vulgar tastes of his youth. He is unconsciously illus- 
trating the trait so humorously satirized by him in Ned Tibbs, 
the shabby beau, who can find " no such dressing as he had at 
Lord Crump's or Lady Crimp's " ; whose very senses have grown 
genteel, and who no longer " smacks at wretched wine or praises 
detestable custard." A lurking thorn, too, is worrying him 
throughout this tour ; he has " outrun the constable " ; that is to 
say, his expenses have outrun his means, and he will have to 
make up for this butterfly flight by toiling like a grub on his 
return. 

Another circumstance contributes to mar the pleasure he had 
promised himself in this excursion. At Paris the party is unex- 
pectedly joined by a Mr. Hickey, a bustling attorney, who is well 
acquainted with that metropolis and its environs, and insists on 
playing the cicerone on all occasions. He and Goldsmith do not 
relish each other, and they have several petty altercations. The 
lawyer is too much a man of business and method for the careless 
poet, and is disposed to manage everything. He has perceived 
Goldsmith's whimsical peculiarities without properly appreciating 
his merits, and is prone to indulge in broad bantering and raillery 
at his expense, particularly irksome if indulged in presence of the 
ladies. He makes himself merry on his return to England, by 
giving the following anecdote as illustrative of Goldsmith's 
vanity : — 



HICKEY, SPECIAL ATTORNEY. 191 

" Being with a party at Versailles, viewing the water-works, 
a question arose among the gentlemen present, whether the dis- 
tance from whence they stood to one of the little islands was 
within the compass of a leap. Goldsmith maintained the affirm- 
ative; but, being bantered on the subject, and remembering 
his former prowess as a youth, attempted the leap, but, falling 
short, descended into the water, to the great amusement of the 
company." 

Was the Jessamy Bride a witness of this unlucky exploit ? 

This same Hickey is the one of whom Goldsmith, some time 
subsequently, gave a good-humored sketch, in his poem of The 
Retaliation. 

' ' Here Hickey reclines, a most blunt, pleasant creature, 
And slander itself must allow him good-nature ; 
He cherish'd his friend, and he relish'd a bumper, 
Yet one fault he had, and that one was a thumper. 
Perhaps you may ask if the man was a miser ; 
I answer. No, no, for he always was wiser ; 
Too courteous, perhaps, or obligingly flat ? 
His very worst foe can't accuse him of that ; 
Perhaps he confided in men as they go. 
And so was too foolishly honest ? Ah, no ! 
Then what was his failing ? Come, tell it, and burn ye — 
He was, could he help it ? a special attorney." 

One of the few remarks extant made by Goldsmith during his 
tour is the following, of whimsical import, in his Animated 
Nature. 

"In going through the towns of France, some time since, I could 
not help observing how much plainer their parrots spoke than ours, 
and how very distinctly I understood their parrots speak French, when 
I could not understood our own, though they spoke my native lan- 
guage. I at first ascribed it to the different qualities of the two lan- 
guages, and was for entering into an elaborate discussion on the vowels 
and consonants ; but a friend that was with me solved the diflQculty at 
once, by assuring me that the French women scarce did anything else 
the whole day than sit and instruct their feathered pupils; and that 
the birds were thus distinct in their lessons in consequence of continual 
schooling." 



192 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

His tour does not seem to have left in his memory the most 
fragrant recollections ; for, being asked, after his return, whether 
travelling on the Continent repaid " an Englishman for the j^ri- 
vations and annoyances attendant on it," he replied, "I recom- 
mend it by all means to the sick, if they are without the sense of 
smelling, and to the poor if they are without the sense of feeling, 
and to both if they can discharge from their minds all idea of 
what in England we term comfort." 

It is needless to say that the universal improvement in the art 
of living on the Continent has at the present day taken away the 
force of Goldsmith's reply, though even at the time it was more 
humorous than correct. 



CHAPTER XXX. 

On his return to England, Goldsmith received the melancholy 
tidings of the death of his mother. Notwithstanding the fame 
as an author to which he had attained, she seems to have been 
disappointed in her early expectations from him. Like others of 
his family, she had been more vexed by his early follies than 
pleased by his proofs of genius ; and in subsequent years, when 
he had risen to fame and to intercourse with the great, had been 
annoyed at the ignorance of the world and want of management, 
which prevented him from pushing his fortune. He had always, 
however, been an affectionate son, and in the latter years of her 
life, when she had become blind, contributed from -his precarious 
resources to prevent her from feeling want. 

He now resumed the labors of his pen, which his recent excur- 
sion to Paris rendered doubly necessary. We should have men- 
tioned a Life of Parnell, published by him shortly after the 
Deserted Village. It was, as usual, a piece of job-work, hastily 
got up for pocket-money. Johnson spoke slightingly of it, and 
the author himself thought proper to apologize for its meagre- 



"■LIFE OF BOLINGBROKE.'' 193 

ness, — yet, in so doing, used a simile, which for beauty of im- 
agery and felicity of language is enough of itself to stamp a value 
upon the essay. 

"Such," says he, "is the very unpoetical detail of the life of 
a poet. Some dates and some few facts, scarcely more interest- 
ing than those that make the ornaments of a country tombstone, 
are all that remain of one whose labors now begin to excite uni- 
versal curiosity. A poet, while living, is seldom an object suffi- 
ciently great to attract much attention ; his real merits are 
known but to a few, and these are generally sparing in their 
praises. When his fame is increased by time, it is then too late 
to investigate the peculiarities of his disposition ; the dews of 
morning are past, and we vainly try to continue the chase hy the 
meridian splendor. ^^ 

He now entered into an agreement with Davies to prepare an 
abridgment, in one volume duodecimo, of his History of Rorne ; 
but first to write a work for which there was a more immediate 
demand. Davies was about to republish Lord Bolingbroke's 
Dissertation on Parties, which he conceived would be exceedingly 
applicable to the affairs of the day, and make a probable hit dur- 
ing the existing state of violent political excitement ; to give it 
still greater effect and currency, he engaged Goldsmith to intro- 
duce it with a prefatory life of Lord Bolingbroke. 

About this time Goldsmith's friend and countryman, Lord 
Clare, was in great affliction, caused by the death of his only son. 
Colonel Nugent, and stood in need of the sympathies of a kind- 
hearted friend. At his request, therefore, Goldsmith paid him a 
visit at his seat of Gosfield, taking his tasks with him. Davies 
was in a worry lest Gosfield Park should prove a Capua to the 
poet, and the time be lost. " Dr. Goldsmith," writes he to a 
friend, "has gone with Lord Clare into the country, and I am 
plagued to get the proofs from him of the Life of Lord Boling- 
hrohe." The proofs, however, were furnished in time for the 
publication of the work in December. The Biography, though 
written during a time of political turmoil, and introducing a work 



194 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

intended to be thrown into the arena of politics, maintained that 
freedom from party prejudice observable in all the writings of 
Goldsmith. It was a selection of facts, drawn from many unread- 
able sources, and arranged into a clear, flowing narrative, illus- 
trative of the career and character of one who, as he intimates, 
"seemed formed by Nature to take delight in struggling with 
opposition ; whose most agreeable hours were passed in storms 
of his own creating ; whose life was spent in a continual conflict 
of politics, and as if that was too short for the combat, has left 
his memory as a subject of lasting contention." The sum received 
by the author for this memoir is supposed, from circumstances, to 
have been forty pounds. 

Goldsmith did not find the residence among the great unat- 
tended with mortifications. He had now become accustomed to 
be regarded in London as a literary lion, and was annoyed at 
what he considered a slight, on the part of Lord Camden, He 
complained of it on his return to town at a party of his friends. 
"I met him," said he, "at Lord Clare's house in the country; 
and he took no more notice of me than if I had been an ordinary 
man." "The company," says Boswell, "laughed heartily at this 
piece of 'diverting simplicity.'" And foremost among the laugh- 
ers was doubtless the rattle-pated Boswell. Johnson, however, 
stepped forward, as usual, to defend the poet, whom he would 
allow no one to assail but himself; perhaps in the present in- 
stance he thought the dignity of literature itself involved in the 
question. " Nay, gentlemen," roared he, " Dr. Goldsmith is in 
the right. A nobleman ought to have made up to such a man 
as Goldsmith, and I think it is much against Lord Camden that 
he neglected him." 

After Goldsmith's return to town he received from Lord Clare 
a present of game, which he has celebrated and perpetuated in 
his amusing verses entitled The Haunch of Venison. Some of 
the lines pleasantly set forth the embarrassment caused by the 
appearance of such an aristocratic delicacy in the humble kitchen 
of a poet, accustomed to look up to mutton as a treat : — 



THE ''HAUNCH OF VENISON,'' 195 

" Thanks, my lord, for your venison ; for finer or fatter 
Never rang'd in a forest, or smok'd in a platter : 
The haunch was a picture for painters to study, 
The fat was so white, and the lean was so ruddy ; 
Though my stomach was sharp, I could scarce help regretting 
To spoil such a delicate picture by eating : 
I had thought in my chambers to place it in view, 
To be shown to my friends as a piece of virtu ; 
As in some Irish houses where things are so-so, 
One gammon of bacon hangs up for a show ; 
But, for eating a rasher, of what they take pride in, 
They'd as soon think of eating the pan it was fry'd in. 

****** 
But hang it — to poets, who seldom can eat, 
Your very good mutton's a very good treat ; 
Such dainties to them, their health it might hurt ; 
It''s like sending them ruffles, when wanting a shirt.''^ 

We have an amusing anecdote of one of Goldsmith's blunders 
which took place on a subsequent visit to Lord Clare's, when that 
nobleman was residing in Bath. 

Lord Clare and the Duke of Northumberland bad houses next 
to each other, of similar architecture. Returning home one morn- 
ing from an early walk, Goldsmith, in one of his frequent fits of 
absence, mistook the house, and walked up into the Duke's 
dining-room, where he and the Duchess were about to sit down to 
breakfast. Goldsmith, still supposing himself in the house of 
Lord Clare, and that they were visitors, made them an easy salu- 
tation, being acquainted with them, and threw himself on a sofa 
in the lounging manner of a man perfectly at home. The Duke and 
Duchess soon perceived his mistake, and, while they smiled inter- 
nally, endeavored, with the considerateness of well-bred people, to 
prevent any awkward embarrassment. They accordingly chatted 
sociably with him about matters in Bath, until, breakfast being 
served, they invited him to partake. The truth at once flashed 
upon poor heedless Goldsmith ; he started up from his free-and- 
easy position, made a confused apology for his blunder, and would 
have retired perfectly disconcerted, had not the Duke and Duchess 



196 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

treated the whole as a lucky occurrence to throw him in their 
way, and exacted a promise from him to dine with them. 

This may be hung up as a companion-piece to his blunder on 
his first visit to Northumberland House. 



CHAPTER XXXI. 

On St. George's day of this year (1771), the first annual ban- 
quet of the Royal Academy was held in the exhibition-room ; the 
walls of which were covered with works of art, about to be sub- 
mitted to public inspection. Sir Joshua Reynolds, who first sug- 
gested this elegant festival, presided in his official character ; Drs. 
Johnson and Goldsmith, of course, were present, as Professors of 
the Academy; and, besides the Academicians, there was a large 
number of the most distinguished men of the day as guests. 
Goldsmith on this occasion drew on himself the attention of the 
company by launching out with enthusiasm on the poems recently 
given to the world by Chatterton, as the works of an ancient 
author by the name of Rowley, discovered in the tower of Red- 
cliffe Church, at Bristol. Goldsmith spoke of them with rapture, 
as a treasure of old English poetry. This immediately raised the 
question of their authenticity; they having been pronounced a 
forgery of Chatterton's. Goldsmith was warm for their being 
genuine. When he considered, he said, the merit of the poetry, 
the acquaintance with life and the human heart displayed in 
them, the antique quaintness of the language and the familiar 
knowledge of liistorical events of their supposed day, he could not 
believe it possible they could be the work of a boy of sixteen, of 
narrow education, and confined to the duties of an attorney's 
ofl&ce. They must be the productions of Rowley. 

Johnson, who was a stout unbeliever in Rowley, as he had been 
in Ossian, rolled in his chair and laughed at the enthusiasm of 
Goldsmith. Horace Walpole, who sat near by, joined in the laugh 
and jeer as soon as he found that the " trouvaille," as he called it, 



THE CHATTEBTON CONTROVERSY. 197 

"oi his friend Chatterton," was in question. This matter, which 
had excited the simple admiration of Goldsmith, was no novelty to 
him, he said, " He might, had he pleased, have had the honor of 
ushering the great discovery to the learned world." And so he 
might, had he followed his first impulse in the matter, for he him- 
self had been an original believer ; had pronounced some specimen 
verses sent to him by Chatterton wonderful for their harmony and 
spirit j and had been ready to print them and publish them to the 
world with his sanction. When he found, however, that his un- 
known correspondent was a mere boy, humble in sphere and indi- 
gent in circumstances, and when Gray and Mason pronounced the 
poems forgeries, he had changed his whole conduct towards the 
unfortunate author, and by his neglect and coldness had dashed 
all his sanguine hopes to the ground. 

Exulting in his superior discernment, this cold-hearted man of 
society now went on to divert himself, as he says, with the credu- 
lity of Goldsmith, whom he was accustomed to pronounce "an 
inspired idiot " ; but his mirth was soon dashed, for on asking the 
poet what had become of this Chatterton, he was answered, doubt- 
less in the feeling tone of one who had experienced the pangs 
of despondent genius, that "he had been to London, and had 
destroyed himself." 

The reply struck a pang of self-reproach even to the cold heart 
of Walpole ; a faint blush may have visited his cheek at his recent 
levity. " The persons of honor and veracity who were present," 
said he in after-years, when he found it necessary to exculpate 
himself from the charge of heartless neglect of genius, " will attest 
with what surprise and concern I thus first heard of his death." 
Well might he feel concern. His cold neglect had doubtless con- 
tributed to madden the spirit of that youthful genius, and hurry 
him towards his untimely end ; nor have all the excuses and pal- 
liations of Walpole's friends and admirers been ever able entirely 
to clear this stigma from his fame. 

But what was there in the enthusiasm and credulity of honest 
Goldsmith in this matter, to subject him to the laugh of Johnson 



198 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

or the raillery of Walpole 1 Granting the poems were not ancient, 
were they not good 1 Granting they were not the productions of 
Eowley, were they the less admirable for being the productions of 
Chatterton? Johnson himself testified to their merits and the 
genius of their composer, when, some years afterwards, he visited 
the tower of Eedcliffe Church, and was shown the coffer in which 
poor Chatterton had pretended to find them. " This," said he, 
" is the most extraordinary young man that has encountered my 
knowledge. It is wonderful how the whelp has written such 
things" 

As to Goldsmith, he persisted in his credulity, and had subse- 
quently a dispute with Dr. Percy on the subject, which interrupted 
and almost destroyed their friendship. After all, his enthusiasm 
was of a generous, poetic kind ; the poems remain beautiful monu- 
ments of genius, and it is even now difficult to persuade one's 
self that they could be entirely the productions of a youth of 
sixteen. 

In the month of August was published anonymously the His- 
tory of England, on which Goldsmith had been for some time 
employed. It was in four volumes, compiled chiefly, as he ac- 
knowledged in the preface, from Rapin, Carte, Smollett, and Hume, 
" each of whom," says he, " have their admirers, in proportion as 
the reader is studious of political antiquities, fond of minute 
anecdote, a warm partisan, or a deliberate reasoner." It possessed 
the same kind of merit as his other historical compilations ; a 
clear, succinct narrative, a simple, easy, and graceful style, and an 
agreeable arrangement of facts ; but was not remarkable for either 
depth of observation or minute accuracy of research. Many pas- 
sages were transferred, with little if any alteration, from his 
Letters from a Nobleman to his Son on the same subject. The 
work, though written without party feeling, met with sharp ani- 
madversions from political scribblers. The writer was charged 
with being unfriendly to liberty, disposed to elevate monarchy 
above its proper sphere; a tool of ministers; one who would 
betray his country for a pension. Tom Davies, the publisher, the 



THE "-HISTORY OF ENGLAND:' 199 

pompous little bibliopole of Russell Street, alarmed lest the book 
should prove unsalable, undertook to protect it by his pen, and 
wrote a long article in its defence in The Public Advertiser. 
He was vain of his critical effusion, and sought by nods and winks 
and innuendoes to intimate his authorship. " Have you seen," said 
he, in a letter to a friend, " ' An Impartial Account of Goldsmith's 
History of England ' ? If you want to know who was the writer 
of it, you will find him in Russell Street ; — hut mum I " 

The History, on the whole, however, was well received; some 
of the critics declared that English history had never before been 
so usefully, so elegantly, and agreeably epitomized, " and, like his 
other historical writings, it has kept its ground " in English 
literature. 

' Goldsmith had intended this summer, in company with Sir 
Joshua Reynolds, to pay a visit to Bennet Langton, at his seat in 
Lincolnshire, where he was settled in domestic life, having the 
year previously married the Countess Dowager of Rothes. The 
following letter, however, dated from his chambers in the Temple, 
on the 7th of September, apologizes for putting off the visit, while 
it gives an amusing account of his summer occupations and of the 
attacks of the critics on his History of England : — 

" My dear Sir, — 

"Since I had the pleasure of seeing you last, I have been almost 
wholly in the country, at a farmer's house, quite alone, trying to write 
a comedy. It is now finished ; but when or how it will be acted, or 
whether it will be acted at all, are questions I cannot resolve. I am 
therefore so much employed upon that, that I am under the necessity 
of putting off my intended visit to Lincolnshire for this season. Rey- 
nolds is just returned from Paris, and finds himself now in the case of 
a truant that must make up for his idle time by diligence. We have 
therefore agreed to postpone our journey till next summer, when we 
hope to have the honor of waiting upon Lady Rothes and you, and 
staying double the time of our late intended visit. We often meet, 
and never without remembering you. I see Mr. Beauclerc very often 
both in town and country. He is now going directly forward to be- 
come a second Boyle : deep in chemistry and physics, Johnson has 
been down on a visit to a country parson, Doctor Taylor, and is 



200 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

returned to his old haunts at Mrs. Thrale's. Burke is a farmer, en 
attendant a better place ; but visiting about too. Every soul is visiting 
about and merry but myself. And that is hard too, as I have been 
trying these three months to do something to make people laugh. 
There have I been strolling about the hedges, studying jests v\dth 
a most tragical countenance. The Natural History is about half 
finished, and I will shortly finish the rest. God knows I am tired of 
this kind of finishing, which is but bungling work ; and that not so 
much my fault as the fault of my scurvy circumstances. They begin 
to talk in town of the Opposition's gaining ground ; the cry of liberty 
is still as loud as ever. I have published, or Davies has published for 
me, an Abridgment of the History of England^ for w^hich I have been 
a good deal abused in the newspapers, for betraying the liberties of 
the people. God knows I had no thought for or against liberty in my 
head ; my whole aim being to make up a book of a decent size, that, 
as 'Squire Richard says, ivonJd do no harm to nobody. However, they 
set me down as an arrant Tory, and consequently an honest man. 
When you come to look at any part of it, you'll say that I am a sore 
Whig. God bless you, and with my most respectful compliments to her 
Ladyship, I remain, dear Sir, your most affectionate humble servant, 

" Oliver Goldsmith." 



CHAPTER XXXII. 

■Though Goldsmith found it impossible to break from his 
literary occupations to visit Bennet Langton, in Lincolnshire, he 
soon yielded to attractions from another quarter, in which some- 
what of sentiment may have mingled. Miss Catharine Horneck, 
one of his beautiful fellow-travellers, otherwise called Little Com- 
ed2/, had been married in August to Henry William Bunbury, Esq., 
a gentleman of fortune, who has become celebrated for the hu- 
morous productions of his pencil. Goldsmith was shortly after- 
wards invited to pay the new^ly married couple a visit at their 
seat, at Barton, in Suffolk. How could he resist such an invita- 
tion — especially as the Jessamy Bride would, of course, be among 
the guests ? It is true, he was hampered with work ; he w^as 
still more hampered with debt ; his accounts with Newbery were 



PRACTICAL JOKES. 201 

perplexed ; but all must give way. New advances are procured 
from JSTewbery, on the promise of a new tale in the style of the 
Vicar of Wakefield, of which he showed him a few roughly- 
sketched chapters ; so, his purse replenished in the old way, " by 
hook or by crook," he posted off to visit the bride at Barton. He 
found there a joyous household, and one where he was welcomed 
with affection. Garrick was there, and played the part of master 
of the revels, for he was an intimate friend of the master of the 
house. Notwithstanding early misunderstandings, a social inter- 
course between the actor and the poet had grown up of late, from 
meeting together continually in the same circle. A few particulars 
have reached us concerning Goldsmith while on this happy visit. 
We believe the legend has come down from Miss Mary Horneck 
herself. " While at Barton," she says, " his manners were always 
playful and amusing, taking the lead in promoting any scheme of 
innocent mirth, and usually prefacing the invitation with ' Come, 
now, let us play the fool a little.' At cards, which was commonly 
a round game, and the stake small, he was always the most noisy, 
affected great eagerness to win, and teased his opponents of the 
gentler sex with continual jest and banter on their want of spirit 
in not risking the hazards of the game. But one of his most fa- 
vorite enjoyments was to romp with the children, when he threw 
off all reserve, and seemed one of the most joyous of the group. 

" One of the means by which he amused us was his songs, 
chiefly of the comic kind, which were sung with some taste and 
humor; several, I believe, were of his own composition, and I 
regret that I neither have copies, which might have been readily 
procured from him at the time, nor do I remember their names." 

His perfect good-humor made him the object of tricks of all 
kinds ; often in retaliation of some prank which he himself had 
played off. Unluckily, these tricks were sometimes made at the 
expense of his toilet, which, with a view peradventure to please 
the eye of a certain fair lady, he had again enriched to the impov- 
erishment of his purse. " Being at all times gay in his dress," 
says this ladylike legend, " he made his appearance at the breakfast- 



202 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

table in a smart black silk coat with an expensive pair of rujQfles ; 
the coat some one contrived to soil, ^nd it was sent to be cleansed ; 
but, either by accident, or probably by design, the day after it 
came home, the sleeves became daubed with paint, which was not 
discovered until the ruffles also, to his great mortification, were 
irretrievably disfigured. 

" He always wore a wig, a peculiarity which those who judge of 
his appearance only from the fine poetical head of Reynolds would 
not suspect ; and on one occasion some person contrived seriously 
to injure this important adjunct to dress. It was the only one he 
had in the country, and the misfortune seemed irreparable until 
the services of Mr. Bunbury's valet were called in, who, however, 
performed his functions so indifferently, that poor Goldsmith's 
appearance became the signal for a general smile." 

This was wicked waggery, especially when it was directed to 
mar all the attempts of the unfortunate poet to improve his per- 
sonal appearance, about which he was at all times dubiously sensi- 
tive, and particularly when among the ladies. 

We have in a former chapter recorded his unlucky tumble into 
a fountain at Versailles, when attempting a feat of agility in 
presence of the fair Hornecks. Water was destined to be equally 
baneful to him on the present occasion. " Some difference of 
opinion," says the fair narrator, " having arisen with Lord Har- 
rington respecting the depth of a pond, the poet remarked that it 
was not so deep but that, if anything valuable was to be found at 
the bottom, he would not hesitate to pick it up. His lordship, 
after some banter, threw in a guinea ; Goldsmith, not to be out- 
done in this kind of bravado, in attempting to fulfil his promise 
without getting wet, accidentally fell in, to the amusement of all 
present ; but persevered, brought out the money, and kept it, 
remarking that he had abundant objects on whom to bestow any 
farther proofs of his lordship's whim or bounty." 

All this is recorded by the beautiful Mary Horneck, the Jessamy 
Bride herself; but while she gives these amusing pictures of poor 
Goldsmith's eccentricities, and of the mischievous pranks played 



LOST MANUSCRIPT, 203 

off upon him, she bears unqualified testimony, which we have 
quoted elsewhere, to the qualities of his head and heart, which 
shone forth in his countenance, and gained him the love of all who 
knew him. 

Among the circumstances of this visit, vaguely called to mind 
by this fair lady in after years, was that Goldsmith read to her 
and her sister the first part of a novel which he had in hand. It 
was doubtless the manuscript mentioned at the beginning of this 
chapter, on which he had obtained an advance of money from 
Newbery to stave off some pressing debts, and to provide funds 
for this very visit. It never was finished. The bookseller, when 
he came afterwards to examine the manuscript, objected to it as a 
mere narrative version of the Good-natured Man. Goldsmith, 
too easily put out of conceit of his writings, threw it aside, for- 
getting that this was the very Newbery who kept his Vicar of 
Wakefield by him nearly two years, through doubts of its suc- 
cess. The loss of the manuscript is deeply to be regretted ; it 
doubtless would have been properly wrought up before given to 
the press, and might have given us new scenes of life and traits of 
character, while it could not fail to bear traces of his delightful 
style. What a pity he had not been guided by the opinions of his 
fair listeners at Barton, instead of that of the astute Mr. Newbery ! 



CHAPTER XXXIII. 

We have mentioned old General Oglethorpe as one of Gold- 
smith's aristocratical acquaintances. This veteran, born in 1698, 
had commenced life early, by serving, when a mere stripling, 
under Prince Eugene, against the Turks. He had continued in 
military life, and been promoted to the rank of major-general in 
1745, and received a command during the Scottish rebelhon. 
Being of strong Jacobite tendencies, he was suspected and accused 
of favoring the rebels ; and though acquitted by a court of inquiry, 
was never afterwards employed; or, in technical language, was 



204 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

shelved. He had since been repeatedly a member of Parliament, 
and had always distinguished himself by learning, taste, active 
benevolence, and high Tory principles. His name, however, has 
become historical, chiefly from his transactions in America, and 
the share he took in the settlement of the colony of Georgia. 
It lies embalmed in honorable immortality in a single line of 

Pope's : — 

"One, driven by strong benevolence of soul, 
Shall fly, like Oglethorpe, from pole to pole." 

The veteran was now seventy-four years of age, but healthy and 
vigorous, and as much the preux chevalier as in his younger days, 
when he served with Prince Eugene. His table was often the 
gathering-place of men of talent. Johnson was frequently there, 
and delighted in drawing from the General details of his various 
*' experiences." He was anxious that he should give the world 
his life. " I know no man," said he, " whose life would be more 
interesting." Still the vivacity of the General's mind and the 
variety of his knowledge made him skip from subject to subject 
too fast for the Lexicographer. "Oglethorpe," growled he, 
"never completes what he has to say." 

Boswell gives us an interesting and characteristic account of a 
dinner-party at the General's, (April 10th, 1772,) at which Gold- 
smith and Johnson were present. After dinner, when the cloth 
was removed, Oglethorpe, at Johnson's request, gave an account of 
the siege of Belgrade, in the true veteran style. Pouring a little 
wine upon the table, he drew his lines and parallels with a wet 
finger, describing the positions of* the opposing forces. " Here 
were we — here were the Turks," to all which Johnson listened 
with the most earnest attention, poring over the plans and dia- 
grams with his usual purblind closeness. 

In the course of conversation the General gave an anecdote of 
himself in early life, when serving under Prince Eugene. Sitting 
at table once in company with a prince of Wurtemberg, the latter 
gave a fillip to a glass of wine, so as to make some of it fly in 
Oglethorpe's face. The manner in which it was done was some- 



DISPUTE ABOUT DUELLING. 205 

what equivocal. How was it to be taken by the stripling oflS.cer 1 
If seriously, he must challenge the prince; but in so doing he 
might fix on himself the character of a drawcansir. If passed 
over without notice, he might be charged with cowardice. His 
mind was made up in an instant. "Prince," said he, smiling, 
" that is an excellent joke ; but we do it much better in Eng- 
land." So saying he threw a whole glass of wine in the Prince's 
face. " II a bien fait, mon Prince," cried an old General present, 
"vous I'avez commencd." (He has done right, my Prince; you. 
commenced it.) The Prince had the good sense to acquiesce in 
the decision of the veteran, and Oglethorpe's retort in kind was" 
taken in good part. 

It was probably at the close of this story that the officious Bos- 
well, ever anxious to promote conversation for the benefit of his 
note-book, started the question whether duelling were consistent 
with moral duty. The old General fired up in an instant. " Un- 
doubtedly," said he, with a lofty air; "undoubtedly a man has a 
right to defend his honor." Goldsmith immediately carried the 
war into Boswell's own quarters, and pinned him with the ques- 
tion, " what he would do if affronted ? " The pliant Boswell, who 
for a moment had the fear of the General rather than of Johnson 
before his eyes, replied, "he should think it necessary to fight." 
" Why, tlien, that solves the question," replied Goldsmith. " No, 
sir ! " thundered out Johnson ; "it does not follow that what a 
man would do, is therefore right." He, however, subsequently 
went into a discussion to show that there were necessities in the 
case arising out of the artificial refinement of society, and its pro- 
scription of any one who should put up with an afi'ront without 
fighting a duel. "He, then," concluded he, "who fights a duel 
does not fight from passion against his antagonist, but out of self- 
defence, to avert the stigma of the world, and to prevent himself 
from being driven out of society. I could wish there were not 
that superfluity of refinement ; but while such notions prevail, no 
doubt a man may lawfully fight a duel." 

Another question started was, whether people who disagreed on a 



206 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

capital point could live together in friendship. Johnson said they 
might. Goldsmith said they could not, as they had not the idem 
velle atque idem nolle — the same likings and aversions. Johnson 
rejoined, that they must shun the subject on which they disagreed. 
" But, sir," said Goldsmith, " when people live together who have 
something as to which they disagree, and which they want to shun, 
they will be in the situation mentioned in the story of Blue Beard : 
*you may look into all the chambers but one;' but we should 
have the greatest inclination to look into that chamber, to talk of 
that subject." "Sir," thundered Johnson, in a loud voice, "I am 
not saying that you could live in friendship with a man from whom 
you differ as to some point j I am only saying that / could do it." 

Who will not say that Goldsmith had the best of this petty 
contest ? How just was his remark ! how felicitous the illustra- 
tion of the blue chamber ! how rude and overbearing was the 
argumentum ad hominem of Johnson, when he felt that he had 
the worst of the argument ! 

The conversation turned upon ghosts. General Oglethorpe told 
the story of a Colonel Prendergast, an officer in the Duke of Marl- 
borough's army, who predicted among his comrades that he should 
die on a certain day. The battle of Malplaquet took place on 
that day. The Colonel was in the midst of it, but came out un- 
hurt. The firing had ceased, and his brother officers jested with 
him about the fallacy of his prediction. " The day is not over," 
replied he, gravely; "I shall die notwithstanding what you see." 
His words proved true. The order for a cessation of firing had 
not reached one of the French batteries, and a random shot from it 
killed the Colonel on the spot. Among his eff'ects was found a 
pocket-book in which he had made a solemn entry, that Sir John 
Friend, who had been executed for high treason, had appeared to 
him, either in a dream or vision, and predicted that he would 
meet him on a certain day (the very day of the battle). Colonel 
Cecil, who took possession of the efiects of Colonel Prendergast, 
and read the entry in the pocket-book, told this story to Pope, the 
poet, in the presence of General Oglethorpe. 



JOSEPH CBADOCK. 207 

This story, as related by the General, appears to have been well 
received, if not credited, by both Johnson and Goldsmith, each of 
whom had something to relate in kind. Goldsmith's brother, 
the clergyman in whom he had such implicit confidence, had 
assured him of his having seen an apparition. Johnson also had 
a friend, old Mr. Cave, the printer, at St. John's Gate, "an honest 
man, and a sensible man," who told him he had seen a ghost ; he 
did not, however, like to talk of it, and seemed to be in great 
horror whenever it was mentioned. " And pray, sir," asked Bos- 
well, "what did he say was the appearance?" "Why, sir, 
something of a shadowy being." 

The reader will not be surprised at this superstitious turn in the 
conversation of such intelligent men, when he recollects that, but 
a few years before this time, all London had been agitated by 
the absurd story of the Cock-lane ghost ; a matter which Dr. 
Johnson had deemed worthy of his serious investigation, and about 
which Goldsmith had written a pamphlet. 



CHAPTER XXXIV. 

Among the agreeable acquaintances made by Goldsmith about 
this time was a Mr. Joseph Cradock, a young gentleman of 
Leicestershire, living at his ease, but disposed to "make himself 
uneasy," by meddling with literature and the theatre; in fact, he 
had a passion for plays and players, and had come up to town 
with a modified translation of Voltaire's tragedy of Zoheide, in a 
view "to get it acted. There was no great difiiculty in the case, as 
he was a man of fortune, had letters of introduction to persons -of 
note, and was altogether in a difterent position from the indigent 
man of genius whom managers might harass with impunity. 
Goldsmith met him at the house of Yates, the actor, and finding 
that he was a friend of Lord Clare, soon became sociable with 
him. Mutual tastes quickened the intimacy, especially as they 
found means of serving each other. Goldsmith wrote an ejDilogue 



208 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

for the tragedy of Zobeide : and Cradock, who was an amateur 
musician, arranged the music for the Threnodia Augustalis, a 
Lament on the death of the Princess Dowager of Wales, the politi- 
cal mistress and patron of Lord Clare, which Goldsmith had 
thrown off hastily to please that nobleman. The tragedy was 
played with some success at Co vent Garden ; the Lament was recited 
and sung at Mrs. Cornelys' rooms — a very fashionable resort in 
Soho Square, got up by a woman of enterprise of that name. It 
was in whimsical parody of those gay and somewhat promiscuous 
assemblages that Goldsmith used to call the motley evening 
parties at his lodgings "little Cornelys." 

The Threnodia Augustalis was not publicly known to be by 
Goldsmith until several years after his death. 

Cradock was one of the few polite intimates who felt more 
disposed to sympathize with the generous qualities of the poet 
than to sport with his eccentricities. He sought his society when- 
ever he came to town, and occasionally had him to his seat in the 
country. Goldsmith appreciated his sympathy, and unburdened 
himself to him without reserve. Seeing the lettered ease in which 
this amateur author was enabled to live, and the time he could 
bestow on the elaboration of a manuscript, " Ah ! Mr. Cradock," 
cried he, " think of me, that must write a volume every month ! " 
He complained to him of the attempts made by inferior writers, 
and by others who could scarcely come under that denomination, 
not only to abuse and depreciate his writings, but to render him 
ridiculous as a man ; perverting every harmless sentiment and 
action into charges of absurdity, malice, or folly. "Sir," said he, 
in the fulness of his heart, " I am as a lion baited by curs ! " 

Another acquaintance, which he made about this time, was a 
young countryman of the name of M'Donnell, whom he met in a 
state of destitution, and, of course, befriended. The following 
grateful recollections of his kindness and his merits were furnished 
by tliat person in after years : — 

"It was in the year 1772," writes he, "that the death of my 
elder brother — when in London, on my way to Ireland — left me 



AN AMANUENSIS. 209 

in a most forlorn situation; I was then about eighteen; I pos- 
sessed neither friends nor money, nor the means of getting to Ire- 
land, of which or of England I knew scarcely anything, from 
having so long resided in France. In this situation I had strolled 
about for two or three days, considering what to do, but unable to 
come to any determination, when Providence directed me to the 
Temple Gardens. I threw myself on a seat, and, willing to forget 
my miseries for a moment, drew out a book ; that book was a 
volume of Boileau. I had not been there long when a gentleman, 
strolling about, passed near me, and observing, perhaps, something 
Irish or foreign in my garb or countenance, addressed me : ' Sir, 
you seem studious ; I hope you find this a favorable place to pursue 
it.' ' Not very studious, sir ; I fear it is the want of society that 
brings me hither ; I am solitary and unknown in this metropolis ; ' 
and a passage from Cicero — Oratio pro Archia — occurring to me, 
I quoted it : ' H?ec studia pernoctant nobiscum, peregrinantur, 
rusticantur.' 'You are a scholar, too, sir, I perceive.' 'A piece of 
one, sir ; but I ought still to have been in the college where I had 
the good fortune to pick up the little I know.' A good deal of con- 
versation ensued ; I told him part of my history, and he, in return, 
gave his address in the Temple, desiring me to call soon, from which, 
to my infinite surprise and gratification, I found that the person 
who thus seemed to take an interest in my fate was my country- 
man, and a distinguished ornament of letters. 

" I did not fail to keep the appointment, and was received in 
the kindest manner. He told me, smilingly, that he was not rich ; 
that he could do little for me in direct pecuniary aid, but would 
endeavor to put me in the way of doing something for myself; 
observing, that he could at least furnish me with advice not 
wholly useless to a young man placed in the heart of a great me- 
tropolis. 'In London,' he continued, 'nothing is to be got for 
nothing ; you must work ; and no man who chooses to be indus- 
trious need be under obligations to another, for here labor of every 
kind commands its reward. If you think proper to assist me 
occasionally as amanuensis, I shall be obliged, and you will be 



210 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

placed under no obligation, until something more permanent can 
be secured for you,' This employment, which I pursued for some 
time, was to translate passages from Buffon, which were abridged 
or altered, according to circumstances, for his Natural History. ^^ 

Goldsmith's literary tasks were fast getting ahead of him, and 
he began now to "toil after them in vain." 

Five volumes of the Natural History here spoken of had long 
since been paid for by Mr. Griffin, yet most of them were still to 
be written. His young amanuensis bears testimony to his embar- 
rassments and perjDlexities, but to the degree of equanimity with 
which he bore them : — 

"It has been said," observes he, "that he was irritable. Such 
may have been the case at times ; nay, I believe it was so ; for 
what with the continual pursuit of authors, printers, and book- 
sellers, and occasional pecuniary embarrassments, few could have 
avoided exhibiting similar marks of impatience. But it was never 
so towards me. I saw him only in his bland and kind moods, 
with a flow, perhaps an overflow, of the milk of human kindness 
for all who were in any manner dependent upon him. I looked 
upon him with awe and veneration, and he upon me as a kind 
parent upon a child. 

" His manner and address exhibited much frankness and cor- 
diality, particularly to those with whom he possessed any degree 
of intimacy. His good-nature was equally apparent. You could 
not dislike the man, although several of his follies and foibles you 
might be tempted to condemn. He was generous and inconsid- 
erate; money with him had little value." 

To escape from many of the tormentors just alluded to, and to 
devote himself without interruption to his task. Goldsmith took 
lodgings for the summer at a farm-house near the six-mile stone 
on the Edgeware road, and carried down his books in two return 
post-chaises. He used to say he believed the farmer's family 
thought him an odd character, similar to that in which the Specta- 
tor appeared to his landlady and her children ; he was The Gentle- 
man. Boswell tells us that he went to visit him at the place in 



SUMMER LODGINGS. 211 

company with Mickle, translator of the Lusiad. Goldsmith was 
not at home. Having a curiosity to see his apartment, however, 
they went in, and found curious scraps of descriptions of animals 
scrawled upon the wall with a black-lead pencil. 

The farm-house in question is still in existence, though much 
altered. It stands upon a gentle eminence in Hyde Lane, com- 
manding a pleasant prospect towards Hendon. The room is still 
pointed out in which She Stoops to Conquer was written ; a 
convenient and airy apartment, up one flight of stairs. 

Some matter-of-fact traditions concerning the author were fur- 
nished, a few years since, by a son of the farmer, who was sixteen 
years of age at the time Goldsmith resided with his father. 
Though he had engaged to board with the family, his meals were 
generally sent to him in his room, in which he passed the most 
of his time, negligently dressed, with his shirt-collar open, busily 
engaged in writing. Sometimes, probably when in moods of com- 
position, he would wander into the kitchen, without noticing 
any one, stand musing with his back to the fire, and then hurry 
off again to his room, no doubt to commit to paper some thought 
which had struck him. 

Sometimes he strolled about the fields, or was to be seen loiter- 
ing and reading and musing under the hedges. He was subject to 
fits of wakefulness, and read much in bed ; if not disposed to read, 
he still kept the candle burning ; if he wished to extinguish it, 
and it was out of his reach, he flung his slipper at it, which would 
be found in the morning near the overturned candlestick and 
daubed with grease. He was noted here, as everywhere else, for 
his charitable feelings. No beggar applied to him in vain, 
and he evinced on all occasions great commiseration for the 
poor. 

He had the use of the parlor to receive and entertain company, 
and was visited by Sir Joshua Reynolds, Hugh Boyd, the reputed 
author of Junius, Sir William Chambers, and other distinguished 
characters. He gave occasionally, though rarely, a dinner-party; 
and on one occasion, when his guests were detained by a thunder- 



212 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

shower, he got up a dance, and carried the merriment late into 
the night. 

As usual, he was the promoter of hilarity among the young, 
and at one time took the children of the house to see a company 
of strolling players at Hendon. The greatest amusement to the 
party, however, was derived from his own jokes on the road and 
his comments on the performance, which produced infinite laughter 
among his youthful companions. 

Near to his rural retreat at Edgeware, a Mr. Seguin, an Irish 
merchant, of literary tastes, had country quarters for his family, 
where Goldsmith was always welcome. 

In this family he would indulge in playful and even grotesque 
humor, and was ready for anything — conversation, music, or a 
game of romps. He prided himself upon his dancing, and would 
walk a minuet with Mrs. Seguin, to the infinite amusement of her- 
self and the children, whose shouts of laughter he bore with per- 
fect good-humor. He would sing Irish songs, and the Scotch 
ballad of Johnny Armstrong. He took the lead in the children's 
sports of blind-man's-buff, hunt the slipper, &c., or in their games 
at cards, and was the most noisy of the party, affecting to cheat 
and to be excessively eager to win ; while with children of smaller 
size he would turn the hind j)art of his wig before, and play all 
kinds of tricks to amuse them. 

One word as to his musical skill and his performance on the 
flute, which comes up so invariably in all his fireside revels. He 
really knew nothing of music scientifically; he had a good ear, 
and may have played sweetly; but we are told he could not read 
a note of music. Roubillac, the statuary, once played a trick 
upon him in this respect. He pretended to score down an air as 
the poet played it, but put down crotchets and semibreves at ran- 
dom. When he had finished, Goldsmith cast his eye over it and 
pronounced it correct ! It is jjossible that his execution in music 
was like his style in writing ; in sweetness and melody he may 
have snatched a grace beyond the reach of art ! 

He was at all times a capital companion for children, and knew 



LIFE AT EDGE WARE. 213 

how to fall in with their humors. " I little thought," said Miss 
Hawkins, the woman grown, " what I should have to boast when 
Goldsmith taught me to play Jack and Jill by two bits of paper 
on his fingers." He entertained Mrs. Garrick, we are told, with a 
whole budget of stories and songs ; delivered the Chimney Stveep 
with exquisite taste as a solo ; and performed a duet with Garrick 
of Old Rose and Burn the Belloivs. 

" I was only five years old," says the late George Colman, 
" when Goldsmith one evening, when drinking coffee with my 
father, took me on his knee and began to play with me, which 
amiable act I returned with a very smart slap in the face ; it must 
have been a tingier, for I left the marks of my little spiteful paw 
upon his cheek. This infantile outrage was followed by summary 
justice, and I was locked up by my father in an adjoining room, to 
undergo solitary imprisonment in the dark. Here I began to howl 
and scream most abominably. At length a friend appeared to ex- 
tricate me from jeopardy ; it was the good-natured Doctor himself, 
with a lighted candle in his hand, and a smile upon his counte- 
nance, which was still partially red from the effects of my petulance. 
I sulked and sobbed, and he fondled and soothed until I began to 
brighten. He seized the propitious moment, placed three hats 
upon the carpet, and a shilling under each; the shillings, he told 
me, were England, France, and Spain. ' Hey, presto, cocko- 
lorum ! ' cried the Doctor, and, lo ! on uncovering the shillings, 
they were all found congregated under one. I was no politician at 
the time, and therefore might not have wondered at the sudden 
revolution which brought England, France, and Spain all under 
one crown ; but, as I was also no conjurer, it amazed me beyond 
measure. From that time, whenever the Doctor came to visit my 

father, 

" ' I pluck'd his gown to share the good man's smile ; ' 

a game of romps constantly ensued, and we were always cordial 
friends and merry playfellows." 

Although Goldsmith made the Edgeware farm-house his head- 
quarters for the summer, he would absent himself for weeks at a 



214 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

time on visits to Mr. Cradock, Lord Clare, and Mr. Langton, at 
their country-seats. He would often visit town, also, to dine and 
partake of the public amusements. On one occasion he accom- 
panied Edmund Burke to witness a performance of the Italian 
Fantoccini or Puppets, in Panton Street ; an exhibition which had 
hit the caprice of the town, and was in a great vogue. The 
puppets were set in motion by wires, so well concealed as to be 
with difficulty detected. Boswell, with his usual obtuseness with 
respect to Goldsmith, accuses him of being jealous of the puppets ! 
" When Burke," said he, " praised the dexterity with which one 
of them tossed a pike, ' Pshaw,' said Goldsmith with some warmth, 
' I can do it better myself.' " " The same evening," adds Boswell, 
" when supping at Burke's lodgings, he broke his shin by attempt- 
ing to exhibit to the company how much better he could jump 
over a stick than the puppets." 

Goldsmith jealous of puppets ! This even passes in absurdity 
Bos well's charge upon him of being jealous of the beauty of the 
two Miss Hornecks. 

The Panton-Street puppets were destined to be a source of 
further amusement to tlie town, and of annoyance to the little 
autocrat of the stage. Foote, the Aristophanes of the English 
drama, who was always on the alert to turn every subject of 
popular excitement to account, seeing the success of the Fantoccini, 
gave out that he should produce a Primitive Puppet-Show at the 
Haymarket, to be entitled The Handsome Chambermaid, or 
Piety in Pattens ; intended to burlesque the sentitnental comedy 
which Garrick still maintained at Drury Lane. The idea of a play 
to be performed in a regular theatre by puppets excited the curi- 
osity and talk of the town. " Will your puppets be as large as 
life, Mr. Foote 1 " demanded a lady of rank. " Oh, no, my lady," 
replied Foote, " not much larger than Garrick" 



DISSIPATION AND DEBTS. 215 



CHAPTER XXXV. 

Goldsmith returned to town in the autumn (1772), with his 
health much disordered. His close fits of sedentary application, 
during which he in a manner tied himself to the mast, had laid the 
seeds of a lurking malady in his system, and produced a severe 
illness in the course of the summer. Town-life was not favorable 
to the health either of body or mind. He could not resist the 
siren voice of temptation, which, now that he had become a noto- 
riety, assailed him on every side. Accordingly we find him launch- 
ing away in a career of social dissipation ; dining and supping 
out ; at clubs, at routs, at theatres ; he is a guest with Johnson 
at the Thrales', and an object of Mrs. Thrale's lively sallies ; he is 
a lion at Mrs. Vesey's and Mrs. Montagu's, where some of the 
high-bred blue-stockings pronounce him a "wild genius," and 
others, peradventure, a "wild Irishman." In the meantime his 
pecuniary difficulties are increasing upon him, conflicting with his 
proneness to pleasure and expense, and contributing by the harass- 
ment of his mind to the wear and tear of his constitution. His 
Animated Nature, though not finished, has been entirely paid for, 
and the money spent. The money advanced by Garrick on New- 
bery's note, still hangs over him as a debt. The tale on which 
Newbery had loaned from two to three hundred pounds previous 
to the excursion to Barton, has proved a failure. The bookseller 
is urgent for the settlement of his complicated account ; the per- 
plexed author has nothing to offer him in liquidation but the copy- 
right of the comedy which he has in his portfolio ; " Though, to 
tell you the truth, Frank," said he, " there are great doubts of its 
success." The offer was accepted, and, like bargains wrung from 
Goldsmith in times of emergency, turned out a golden speculation 
to the bookseller. 

In this way Goldsmith went on " overrunning the constable," 
as he termed it ; spending everything in advance ; working with 
an overtasked head and weary heart to pay for past pleasures 



216 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

and past extravagance, and at the same time incurring new debts, 
to perpetuate his struggles and darken his future prospects. While 
the excitement of society and the excitement of composition con- 
spire to keep up a feverishness of the system, he has incurred an 
unfortunate habit of quacking himself with James's powders, a 
fashionable panacea of the day. 

A farce, produced this year by Garrick, and entitled The Irish 
Widow, perpetuates the memory of practical jokes played off a 
year or two previously upon the alleged vanity of poor, simple- 
hearted Goldsmith. He was one evening at the house of his friend 
Burke, when he was beset by a tenth muse, an Irish widow and 
authoress, just arrived from Ireland, full of brogue and blunders, 
and poetic fire and rantipole gentility. She was soliciting sub- 
scriptions for her poems, and assailed Goldsmith for his patron- 
age ; the great Goldsmith — her countryman, and of course her 
friend. She overpowered him with eulogiums on his own poems, 
and then read some of her own, with vehemence of tone and ges- 
ture, appealing continually to the great Goldsmith to know how 
he relished them. 

Poor Goldsmith did all that a kind-hearted and gallant gentle- 
man could do in such a case ; he praised her poems as far as the 
stomach of his sense would permit — perhaps a little further ; he 
offered her his subscription ; and it was not until she had retired 
with many parting compliments to the great Goldsmith, that he 
pronounced the poetry which had been inflicted on him execrable. 
The whole scene had been a hoax got up by Burke for the amuse- 
ment of his company ; and the Irish widow, so admirably per- 
formed, had been personated by a Mrs. Balfour, a lady of his 
connection, of great sprightliness and talent. 

We see nothing in the story to establish the alleged vanity of 
Goldsmith, but we think it tells rather to the disadvantage of 
Burke, — being unwarrantable under their relations of friendship, 
and a species of waggery quite beneath his genius. 

Croker, in his notes to Boswell, gives another of these practical 
jokes perpetrated by Burke at the expense of Goldsmith's credulity. 



PBACTICAL JOKES, 217 

It was related to Croker by Colonel O'Moore, of Cloglian Castle, 
in Ireland, who was a party concerned. The Colonel and Burke, 
walking one day through Leicester Square on their way to Sir 
Joshua Reynolds's, with whom they were to dine, observed Gold- 
smith, who was likewise to be a guest, standing and regarding a 
crowd which was staring and shouting at some foreign ladies in 
the window of a hotel. "Observe Goldsmith," said Burke to 
O'Moore, "and mark what passes between us at Sir Joshua's." 
They passed oil and reached there before him. Burke received 
Goldsmith with affected reserve and coldness ; being pressed to 
explain the reason, " Really," said he, " I am ashamed to keep 
company with a person who could act as you have just done in 
the Square." Goldsmith protested he was ignorant of what was 
meant. " Why," said Burke, " did you not exclaim, as you were 
looking up at those women, what stupid beasts the crowd must 
be for staring with such admiration at tho&e painted Jezebels, 
w^hile a man of your talents passed by unnoticed?" "Surely, 
surely, my dear friend," cried Goldsmith, with alarm, " surely I 
did not say so?" "Nay," replied Burke, "if you had not said 
so, how should I have known it?" "That's true," answered 
Goldsmith, " I am very sorry — it was very foolish : / do recollect 
that something of the kind passed through my m/ind, hut I did 
not think I had uttered itJ^ 

It is proper to observe that these jokes were played off by 
Burke before he had attained the full eminence of his social 
position, and that he may have felt privileged to take liberties 
with Goldsmith as his countryman and college associate. It is 
evident, however, that the peculiarities of the latter, and his guile- 
less simplicity, made him a butt for the broad waggery of some of 
his associates ; while others more polished, though equally perfid- 
ious, were on the watch to give currency to his bulls and blunders. 

The Stratford jubilee, in honor of Shakspeare, where Boswell 
had made a fool of himself, was still in every one's mind. It was 
sportively suggested that a fete should be held at Litchfield in 
honor of Johnson and Garrick, and that the Beaux' Stratagem^ 



218 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

should be played by the members of the Literary Club. " Then," 
exclaimed Goldsmith, " I shall certainly play Scrub. I should like 
of all things to try my hand at that character." The unwary 
speech, which any one else might have made without comment, 
has been thought worthy of record as whimsically characteristic. 
Beauclerc was extremely apt to circulate anecdotes at his expense, 
•founded perhaps on some trivial incident, but dressed up with the 
embellishments of his sarcastic brain. One relates to a venerable 
dish of peas, served up at Sir Joshua's table, which should have 
been green, but were any other color. A wag suggested to Gold- 
smith in a whisper, that they should be sent to Hammersmith, as 
that was the way to turn-em-green (Turnham Green). Goldsmith, 
delighted with the pun, endeavored to repeat it at Burke's table, 
but missed the point. "That is the way to make 'em green," 
said he. Nobody laughed. He perceived he was at fault. "I 
mean that is the road to turn 'em green." A dead pause and a 
stare; — "whereupon," adds Beauclerc, "he started up discon- 
certed and abruptly left the table." This is evidently one of 
Beauclerc's caricatures. 

On another occasion the poet and Beauclerc were seated at the 
theatre next to Lord Shelburne, the minister, whom political 
writers thought proper to nickname Malagrida. " Do you know," 
said Goldsmith to his lordship, in the course of conversation, " that 
I never could conceive why they call you Malagrida, for Malagrida 
was a very good sort of man." This was too good a trip of the 
tongue for Beauclerc to let pass : he serves it up in his next letter 
to Lord Charlemont, as a specimen of a mode of turning a thought 
the wrong way, peculiar to the poet ; he makes merry over it with 
his witty and sarcastic compeer, Horace Walpole, who pronounces 
it "a picture of Goldsmith's whole life." Dr. Johnson alone, when 
he hears it bandied about as Goldsmith's last blunder, growls forth 
a friendly defence: "Sir," said he, "it was a mere blunder in 
emphasis. He meant to say, I wonder they should use Malagrida 
as a term of reproach." Poor Goldsmith ! On such points he 
was ever doomed to be misinterpreted. Rogers, the poet, meeting 



GOLDSMITH PEOVED TO BE A FOOL. 219 

in times long subsequent with a survivor from those days, asked 
him what Goldsmith really was in conversation. The old conven- 
tional character was too deeply stamped in the memory of the vet- 
eran to be effaced. '' Sir," replied the old wiseacre, " he was a fool. 
The right word never came to him. If you gave him back a bad 
shilling, he'd say. Why, it's as good a shilling as ever was horn. 
You know he ought to have said coined. Coined, sir, never 
entered his head. He was a fool, sir.''^ 

We have so many anecdotes in which Goldsmith's simplicity is 
played upon, that it is quite a treat to meet with one in which he is 
represented playing upon the simplicity of others, especially when 
the victim of his joke is the " Great Cham " himself, whom all 
others are disposed to hold so much in awe. Goldsmith and John- 
son were supping cosily together at a tavern in Dean Street, Soho, 
kept by Jack Roberts, a singer at Drury Lane, and a protdgd of 
Garrick's. Johnson delighted in these gastronomical tete-a-tetes, 
and was expatiating in high good-humor on a dish of rumps and 
kidneys, the veins of his forehead swelling with the ardor of masti- 
cation. "These," said he, "are pretty little things; but a man 
must eat a great many of them before he is filled." 

" Aye ; but how many of them," asked Goldsmith, with affected 
simplicity, " would reach to the moon 1 " " To the moon ! Ah, 
sir, that, I fear, exceeds your calculation." "Not at all, sir; I 
think I could tell." "Pray, then, sir, let us hear." "Why, sir, 
one, if it were long enough/" Johnson growled for a time at 
finding himself caught in such a trite schoolboy trap. " Well, 
sir," cried he at length, "I have deserved it. I should not have 
provoked so foolish an answer by so foolish a question." 

Among the many incidents related as illustrative of Goldsmith's 
vanity and envy is one which occurred one evening when he was in 
a drawing-room with a party of ladies, and a ballad-singer under 
the window struck up his favorite song of Salli/ Salisbury. 
" How miserably this woman sings ! " exclaimed he. " Pray, 
Doctor," said the lady of the house, " could you do it better ? " 
"Yes, madam, and the company shall be judges." The com- 



220 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

pany, of course, prepared to be entertained by an absurdity ; but 
their smiles were wellnigli turned to tears, for lie acquitted himself 
with a skill and pathos that drew universal applause. He had, in 
fact, a delicate ear for music, which liad been jarred by the false 
notes of the ballad-singer ; and there were certain pathetic ballads, 
associated with recollections of his childhood, which were sure to 
touch the springs of his heart. ^ We have another story of him, 
connected with ballad-singing, which is still more characteristic. 
He was one evening at the house of Sir William Chambers, in 
Berners Street, seated at a whist-table with Sir William, Lady 
Chambers, and Baretti, when all at once he threw down his cards, 
hurried out of the room and into the street. He returned in an 
instant, resumed his seat, and the game went on. Sir William, 
after a little hesitation, ventured to ask the cause of his retreat, 
fearing he had been overcome by the heat of the room. " JSTot at 
all," replied Goldsmith ; "but in truth I could not bear to hear 
that unfortunate woman in the street, half singing, half sobbing, 
for such tones could only arise from the extremity of distress : her 
voice grated painfully on my ear and jarred my frame, so that I 
could not rest until I had sent her away." It was in fact a poor 
ballad-singer whose cracked voice had been heard by others of the 
party, but without having the same effect on their sensibilities. 
It was the reality of his fictitious scene in the story of the " Man 
in Black ; " wherein he describes a woman in rags, with one child in 
her arms and another on her back, attempting to sing ballads, but 
with such a mournful voice that it was difficult to determine 
whether she was singing or crying. "A wretch," he adds, "who, 
in the deepest distress, still aimed at good-humor, was an object my 
friend was by no means capable of withstanding." The "Man in 
Black " gave the poor woman all that he had — a bundle of 
matches. Goldsmith, it is probable, sent his ballad-singer away 
rejoicing, with all the money in his pocket. 

Ranelagh was at that time' greatly in vogue as a place of public 
entertainment. It was situated near Chelsea ; the principal room 
was a Rotunda of great dimensions, with an orchestra in the 



THE POET AT BANELAGH. 221 

centre, and tiers of boxes all round. It was a place to which 
Johnson resorted occasionally. "I am a great friend to public 
amusements," said he, "for they keejD peoj^le from vice."-"^ G-old- 
smith was equally a friend to them, though perhaps not altogether 
on such moral grounds. He was particularly fond of masquerades, 
which were then exceedingly popular, and got ujd at Ranelagh with 
great expense and magnificence. Sir Joshua Reynolds, who had 
likewise a taste for such amusements, was sometimes his compan- 
ion ; at other times he w^ent alone ; his peculiarities of j)erson 
and manner would soon betray him, whatever might be his dis- 
guise, and he would be singled out by wags, acquainted with his 
foibles, and more successful than himself in maintaining their 
incognito, as a capital subject to be played upon. Some, pretend- 
ing not to know him, would decry his writings, and praise those of 
his contemporaries ; others would laud his verses to the skies, but 
purposely misquote and burlesque them ; others would annoy him 
with parodies ; while one young lady, whom he was teasing, as he 
supposed, with great success and infinite humor, silenced his rather 
boisterous laughter by quoting his own line about " the loud laugh 
that speaks the vacant mind." On one occasion he was absolutely 
driven out of the house by the persevering jokes of a wag, whose 
complete disguise gave him no means of retaliation. 

His name appearing in the newspapers among the distinguished 
persons present at one of these amusements, his old enemy, 
Kenrick, immediately addressed to him a copy of anonymous 
verees, to the following purport. 

1 " Alas, sir ! " said Johnson, speaking, when in another mood, of grand 
hoiises, fine gardens, and splendid places of public amusement ; " alas, 
sir ! these are only struggles for happiness. When I first entered Ranelagh 
it gave au expansion and gay sensation to my mind, such as I never experi- 
enced anywhere else. But, as Xerxes wept when he reviewed his immense 
army, and considered that not one of that great multitude would be alive 
a hundred years afterwards, so it went to my heart to consider that there 
was not one in all that brilliant circle that was not afraid to go home and 
think." 



222 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 



TO DK. GOLDSMITH; 

ON SEEING HIS NAME IN THE LIST OP MUMMERS AT THE LATE 

MASQUERADE. 

" How widely different, Goldsmith, are the ways 
Of Doctors now, and those of ancient days ! 
Theirs taught the truth in academic shades. 
Ours in lewd hops and midnight masquerades. 
So changed the times ! say, philosophic sage, 
"Whose genius suits so well this tasteful age, 
Is the Pantheon, late a sink obscene, 
Become the fountain of chaste Hippocrene ? 
Or do thy moral numbers quaintly flow, 
Inspired by th' Aganippe of Soho ? 
Do wisdom's sons gorge cates and vermicelli, 
Like beastly Bickerstaffe or bothering Kelly ? 
Or art thou tired of th' undeserved applause. 
Bestowed on bards affecting Virtue's cause ? 
Is this the good that makes the humble vain, 
The good philosophy should not disdain ? 
If so, let pride dissemble all it can, 
A modern sage is still much less than man." 

Goldsmith was keenly sensitive to attacks of the kind, and 
meeting Kenrick at the Chapter CofFee-House, called him to sharp 
account for taking such liberty with his name, and calling his 
morals in question, merely on account of his being seen at a place 
of general resort and amusement. Kenrick shuffled and sneaked, 
protesting that he meant nothing derogatory to his private charac- 
ter. Goldsmith let him know, however, that he was aware of his 
having more than once indulged in attacks of this dastard kind, and 
intimated that another such outrage would be followed by personal 
chastisement. 

Kenrick, having played the craven in his presence, avenged him- 
self as soon as he was gone by complaining of his having made a 
wanton attack upon him, and by making coarse comments upon 
his writings, conversation, and person. 



INVITATION TO CHRISTMAS. 223 

The scurrilous satire of Kenrick, however unmerited, may have 
checked Goldsmith's taste for masquerades. Sir Joshua Reynolds, 
calling on the poet one morning, found him walking about his 
room in somewhat of a reverie, kicking a bundle of clothes before 
him like a football. It proved to be an expensive masquerade 
dress, which he said he had been fool enough to purchase, and as 
there was no other way of getting the worth of his money, he was 
trying to take it out in exercise. 



CHAPTER XXXVI. 

From the feverish dissipations of town. Goldsmith is summoned 
away to partake of the genial dissipations of the country. In the 
month of December, a letter from Mrs. Bunbury invites him down 
to Barton, to pass the Christmas holidays. The letter is written 
in the usual playful vein which marks his intercourse with this 
charming family. He is to come in his "smart spring-velvet 
coat," to bring a new wig to dance with the haymakers in, and 
above all to follow the advice of herself and her sister, (the Jes- 
samy Bride,) in playing loo. This letter, which plays so archly, 
yet kindly, with some of poor Goldsmith's peculiarities, and be- 
speaks such real ladylike regard for him, requires a word or two of 
annotation. The spring-velvet suit alluded to appears to have been 
a gallant adornment, (somewhat in the style of the famous bloom- 
colored coat,) in which Goldsmith had figured in the preceding 
month of May — the season of blossoms : for, on the 21st of that 
month, we find the following entry in the chronicle of Mr. William 
Filby, tailor : To your blue velvet suit, <£21 10s. 9(i. Also, 
about the same time, a suit of livery and a crimson collar for the 
serving-man. Again we hold the Jessamy Bride responsible for 
this gorgeous splendor of wardrobe. 

The new wig no doubt is a bag-wig and solitaire, still highly the 
mode, and in which Goldsmith is represented as figuring when in 
full dress equipped with his sword. 



224 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

As to the dancing with the haymakers, we presume it alludes to 
some gambol of the poet, in the course of his former visit to 
Barton ; when he ranged the fields and lawns a chartered libertine, 
and tumbled into the fish-ponds. 

As to the suggestions about loo, they are in sportive allusion to 
the Doctor's mode of playing that game in their merry evening 
parties ; affecting the desperate gambler and easy dupe ; running 
counter to all rule ; making extravagant ventures ; reproaching all 
others with cowardice ; dashing at all hazards at the pool, and 
getting himself completely loo'd, to the great amusement of the 
company. The drift of the fair sisters' advice was most probably 
to tempt him on, and then leave him in the lurch. 

With these comments we subjoin Goldsmith's reply to Mrs. 
Bunbury, a fine piece of off-hand, humorous writing, which has 
but in late years been given to the public, and which throws a 
familiar light on the social circle at Barton. 

" Madam, — I read your letter with all that allowance which critical 
candor could require, but after all find so much to object to, and so 
much to raise my indignation, that I cannot help giving it a serious 
answer. — I am not so ignorant, madam, as not to see there are many 
sarcasms contained in it, and solecisms also. (Solecism is a word 
that comes from the town of Soleis in Attica, among the Greeks, built 
by Solon, and applied as we use the word Kidderminster for curtains 
from a town also of that name ; — but this is learning you have no 
taste for !) — I say, madam, that there are many sarcasms in it, and 
solecisms also. But not to seem an ill-natured critic, I'll take leave to 
quote your own words, and give you my remarks upon them as they 
occur. You begin as follows : — 

*' 'I hope, my good Doctor, you soon will be here, 
And your spring- velvet coat very smart will appear. 
To open our ball the first day of the year.' 

" Pray, madam,- where did you ever find the epithet ' good,' applied 
to the title of doctor ? Had you called me ' learned doctor,' or ' grave 
doctor,' or ' noble doctor,' it might be allowable, because they belong 
to the profession. But, not to cavil at trifles, you talk of my ' spring- 
velvet coat,' and advise me to wear it the first day in the year, that is, 
in the middle of winter ! — a spring-velvet coat in the middle of 



LETTEB TO MRS. BUNBUBY. 225 

winter ! ! ! That would be a solecism indeed ! and yet to increase the 
inconsistency, in another part of your letter you call me a beau. Now, 
on one side or other, you must be wrong. If I am a beau, I can 
never think of wearing a spring-velvet in winter ; and if I am not a 
beau, why then, that explains itself. But let me go on to your two 
next strange lines : — 

' ' ' And bring with you a wig, that is modish and gay, 
To dance with the girls that are makers of hay.' 

"The absurdity of making hay at Christmas you yourself seem sen- 
sible of : you say your sister will laugh ; and so indeed she well may ! 
The Latins have an expression for a contemptuous kind of laughter, 
' naso contemnere adunco ; ' that is, to laugh with a crooked nose. 
She may laugh at you in the manner of the ancients if she thinks fit. 
But now I come to the most extraordinary of all extraordinary propo- 
sitions, — which is, to take your and your sister's advice in playing at 
loo. The presumption of the offer raises my indignation beyond the 
bounds of prose ; it inspires me at once with verse and resentment. I 
take advice ! and from whom ? You shall hear. 

" Eirst, let me suppose, what may shortly be true, 
The company set, and the word to be Loo : 
All smirking, and pleasant, and big with adventure, 
And ogling the stake which is fix'd in the centre. 
Eound and round go the cards, while I inwardly damn 
At never once finding a visit from Pam. 
I lay down my stake, apparently cool. 
While the harpies about me all pocket the pool. 
I fret in my gizzard, yet, cautious and sly, 
I wish all my friends may be bolder than I : 
Yet still they sit snug, not ,a creature will aim 
By losing their money to venture at fame. 
'Tis in vain that at niggardly caution I scold, 
'Tis in vain that I flatter the brave and the bold : 
All play their own way, and they think me an ass, . . . 
' What does Mrs. Bunbury ? ' . . ' I, Sir ? I pass.' 
' Pray what does Miss Horneck ? take courage, come do.' 
' Who, I? — let me see, sir, why I must pass too.' 
Mr. Bunbury frets, and I fret like the devil, 
To see them so cowardly, lucky, and civil. 
Yet still I sit snug, and continue to sigh on, . 



226 OLIVER GOLBSMITH. 

Till, made by my losses as bold as a lion, 

I venture at all, while my avarice regards 

The whole pool as my own. . . ' Come, give me five cards.' 

* Well done ! ' cry the ladies ; ' ah, Doctor, that's good ! 

The pool's very rich, . . ah ! the Doctor is ioo'd ! ' 

Thus foil'd in my courage, on all sides perplext, 

I ask for advice from the lady that's next : 

' Pray, ma'am, be so good as to give your advice ; 

Don't you think the best way is to venture for't twice ? ' 

' I advise,' cries the lady, ' to try it, I own. . . 

Ah ! the Doctor is Ioo'd ! Come, Doctor, put down.' 

Thus, playing, and playing, I still grow more eager, 

And so bold, and so bold, I'm at last a bold beggar. 

Now, ladies, I ask, if law-matters you're skill'd in, 

Whether crimes such as yours should not come before Fielding: 

For giving advice that is not worth a straw. 

May well be call'd picking of pockets in law ; 

And picking of pockets, with which I now charge ye, 

Is, by quinto Elizabeth, Death without Clergy. 

What justice, when both to the Old Bailey brought ! 

By the gods, I'll enjoy it, tho' 'tis but in thought ! 

Both are placed at the bar, with all proper decorum, 

With bunches of fennel, and nosegays before 'em ; 

Both cover their faces with mobs and all that, 

But the judge bids them, angrily, take off their hat. 

When uncover'd a buzz of inquiry runs round, 

' Pray what are their crimes ? ' . . ' They've been pilfering found. ' 

'But, pray, who have they pilfer'd ?' . . ' A doctor, I hear.' 

' What, yon solemn-faced, odd-looking man that stands near f 

'The same.' . . ' What a pity ! how does it surprise one, 

Tivo handsomer culprits I never set eyes on ! ' 

Then their friends all come round me with cringing and leering, 

To melt me to pity, and soften my swearing. 

First Sir Charles advances with phrases well-strung, 

' Consider, dear Doctor, the girls are but young.' 

' The younger the worse,' I return him again, 

' It shows that their habits are all dyed in grain.' 

' But then they're so handsome, one's bosom it grieves.' 

' What signifies handsome, when people are thieves ? ' 

' But where is your justice ? their cases are hard.' 

' What signifies justice f I want the reward. 



THEATRICAL BELAYS. 227 

" ' There's the parish of Edmonton offers forty pounds ; there's the 
parish of St. Leonard Shoreditch offers forty pounds ; there's the 
parish of Tyburn, from the Hog-in-the-pound to St. Giles's watch- 
house, offers forty pounds, — I shall have all that if I convict 
them ! ' — 

" ' But consider their case, . . it may yet be your own ! 
And see how they kneel ! Is your heart made of stone ? ' 
This moves : . . so at last I agree to relent, 
For ten pounds in hand, and ten pounds to be spent.' 

"I challenge you all to answer this: I tell you, you cannot. It 
cuts deep. But now for the rest of the letter : and next — but I want 
room — so I believe I shall battle the rest out at Barton some day next 
week. — I don't value you all ! 0. G." 

We regret that we have no record of this Christmas visit to 
Barton ; that the poet had no Boswell to follow at his heels, and 
take note of all his sayings and doings. We can only picture 
him in our minds, casting off all care ; enacting the lord of misrule ; 
presiding at the Christmas revels ; providing all kinds of merri- 
ment ; keeping the card-table in an uproar, and finally opening 
the ball on the first day of the year in his spring-velvet suit, with 
the Jessamy Bride for a partner. 



CHAPTER XXXVII. 

The gay life depicted in the two last chapters, while it kept 
Goldsmith in a state of continual excitement, aggravated the 
malady which was impairing his constitution ; yet his increasing 
perplexities in money-matters drove him to the dissipation of 
society as a relief from solitary care. The delays of the theatre 
added to those perplexities. He had long since finished his new 
comedy, yet the year 1772 passed away without his being able to 
get it on the stage. No one, uninitiated in the interior of a theatre, 
that little world of traps and trickery, can have any idea of the 
obstacles and perplexities multiplied in the way of the most 
eminent and successful author by the mismanagement of managers. 



228 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

the jealousies and intrigues of rival authors, and the fantastic 
and impertinent caprices of actors. A long and baffling negotia- 
tion was carried on between Goldsmith and Colman, the manager 
of Covent Garden ; who retained the play in his hands until the 
middle of January, (1773,) without coming to a decision. The 
theatrical season was rapidly passing away, and Goldsmith's 
pecuniary difficulties were augmenting and pressing on him. We 
may judge of his anxiety by the following letter : — 

" To George Colman, Esq. 
"Dear Sir, — 

" I entreat you'll relieve me from that state of suspense in which I 
have been kept for a long time. Whatever objections you have made 
or shall make to my play, I will endeavor to remove and not argue 
about them. To bring in any new judges either of its merits or faults 
I can never submit to. Upon a former occasion, when my other play 
was before Mr. Garrick, he offered to bring me before Mr. Whitehead's 
tribunal, but I refused the proposal with indignation : I hope I shall 
not experience as harsh treatment from you as from him. I have, as 
you know, a large sum of money to make up shortly ; by accepting 
my play, I can readily satisfy my creditor that way ; at any rate, I 
must look about to some certainty to be prepared. For God's sake 
take the play, and let us make the best of it, and let me have the same 
measure, at least, which you have given as bad plays as mine. 
" I am, your friend and servant, 

"Oliver Goldsmith." 

Colman returned the manuscript with the blank sides of the 
leaves scored with disparaging comments, and suggested alterations, 
but with the intimation that the faith of the theatre should be 
kept, and the play acted notwithstanding. Goldsmith submitted 
the criticisms to some of his friends, who pronounced them trivial, 
unfair, and contemptible, and intimated that Colman, being a 
dramatic writer himself, might be actuated by jealousy. The play 
was then sent, with Colman's comments written on it, to Garrick ; 
but he had scarce sent it when Johnson interfered, represented the 
evil that might result from an apparent rejection of it by Covent 
Garden, and undertook to go forthwith to Colman, and have a 



NEGOTIATIONS WITH COLMAN. 229 

talk with him on the subject. Goldsmith, therefore, penned the 
following note to Garrick : — 

" Dear Sir, — 

" I ask many pardons for the trouble I gave you yesterday. Upon 
more mature deliberation, and the advice of a sensible friend, I began 
to think it indelicate in me to tlirow upon you the odium of confirming 
Mr. Colman's sentence. I therefore request you will send my play 
back by my servant ; for having been assured of having it acted at the 
other house, though I confess yours in every respect more to my wisli, 
yet it would be folly in me to forego an advantage which lies in my 
power of appealing from Mr. Colman's opinion to the judgment of 
the town. I entreat, if not too late, you will keep this affair a secret 
for some time. 

" I am, dear sir, your very humble servant, 

"Oliver Goldsmith." 

The negotiation of Johnson with the manager of Covent Gar- 
den was effective. " Colman," he says, " was prevailed on at last, 
by much solicitation, nay, a kind of force," to bring forward the 
comedy. Still the manager was ungenerous, or at least indiscreet 
enough to express his opinion that it would not reach a second 
representation. The plot, he said, was bad, and the interest not 
sustained; "it dwindled, and dwindled, and at last went out like 
the snuff of a candle." The effect of his croaking was soon appar- 
ent within the walls of the theatre. Two of the most popular 
actors, Woodward and Gentleman Smith, to whom the parts of 
Tony Lumpkin and Young Marlow were assigned, refused to act 
them ; one of them alleging, in excuse, the evil predictions of the 
manager. Goldsmith was advised to postpone the performance of 
his play until he could get these important parts well supplied. 
" No," said he, " I would sooner that my play were damned by 
bad players than merely saved by good acting." 

Quick was substituted for Woodward in Tony Lumpkin, and 
Lee Lewis, the harlequin of the theatre, for Gentleman Smith in 
Young Marlow ; and both did justice to their parts. 

Great interest was taken by Goldsmith's friends in the success 
of his piece. The rehearsals were attended by Johnson, Cradock, 



230 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

Murphy, Reynolds and his sister, and the whole Horneck connec- 
tion, including, of course, the Jessamy Bride, whose presence may 
have contributed to flutter the anxious heart of the author. The 
rehearsals went off with great applause; but that Colmau attributed 
to the partiality of friends. He continued to croak, and refused 
to risk any expense in new scenery or dresses on a play which he 
was sure would prove a failure. 

The time was at hand for the first representation, and as yet 
the comedy was without a title. " We are all in labor for a name 
for Goldy's play," said Johnson, who, as usual, took a kind of 
fatherly protecting interest in poor Goldsmith's affairs. " The 
Old House a New Inn " was thought of for a time, but still did 
not please. Sir Joshua Reynolds proposed "The Belle's Strata- 
gem," an elegant title, but not considered applicable, the perplexi- 
ties of the comedy being produced by the mistakes of the hero, not 
the stratagem of the heroine. The name was afterwards adopted 
by Mrs. Cowley for one of her comedies. The Mistakes of a 
Night was the title at length fixed upon, to which Goldsmith pre- 
fixed the words, She Stoops to Conquer. 

The evil bodings of Colman still continued : they were even 
communicated in the box-oflnce to the servant of the Duke of 
Gloucester, who was sent to engage a box. Never did the play of 
a popular writer struggle into existence through more difficulties. 

In the meantime Foot'e's "Primitive Puppet-Show/' entitled 
the Handsome Housemaid, or Piety in Pattens, had been brought 
out at the Haymarket on the 15th of February. All the world, 
fashionable and unfashionable, had^ crowded to the theatre. The 
street was thronged with equipages, — the doors were stormed by 
the mob. The burlesque was completely successful, and sentimen- 
tal comedy received its quietus. Even Garrick, who had recently 
befriended it, now gave it a kick, as he saw; it going down-hill, and 
sent Goldsmith a humorous prologue to help his comedy of the 
opposite school. Garrick and Goldsmith, however, were now on 
very cordial terms, to which the social meetings in the circle of 
the Hornecks and Bunburys may have contributed. 



''SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER.'' 231 

On the 15th of March the new comedy was to be performed. 
Those who had stood up for its merits, and been irritated and 
disgusted by the treatment it had received from the manager, deter- 
mined to muster their forces, and aid in giving it a good launch 
upon the town. The particulars of this confederation, and of its 
triumphant success, are amusingly told by Cumberland in his 
memoirs. 

" We were not over-sanguine of success, but perfectly determined to 
struggle hard for our author. We accordingly assembled our strength 
at the Shakspeare Tavern, in a considerable body, for an early 
dinner, where Samuel Johnson took the chair at the head of a long 
table, and was the life and soul of the corps ; the poet took post 
silently by his side, with the Burkes, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Fitzher- 
bert, Caleb Whitefoord, and a phalanx of North British, predetermined 
applauders, under the banner of Major Mills, — all good men and 
true. Our illustrious president was in inimitable glee ; and poor 
Goldsmith that day took all his raillery as patiently and complacently 
as my friend Boswell would have done any day or every day of his 
life. In the meantime we did not forget our duty ; and though we 
had a better comedy going, in which Johnson was chief actor, we 
betook ourselves in good time to our separate and allotted posts, and ■ 
waited the awful drawing up of the curtain. As our stations were 
preconcerted, so were our signals for plaudits arranged and determined 
upon in a manner that gave every one his cue where to look for 
them, and how to follow them up. 

" We had among us U very worthy and efficient member, long since 
lost to his friends and the world at large, Adam Drummond, of 
amiable memory, who was gifted by nature with the most sonorous, 
and at the same time the most contagious laugh that ever echoed from 
the human lungs. The neighing of the horse of the son of Hystaspes 
was a whisper to it ; the whole thunder of the theatre could not drown 
it. This kind and ingenious friend fairly forewarned us that he knew 
no more when to give his fire than the cannon did that was planted on 
a battery. He desired, therefore, to have a flapper at his elbow, and 
I had the honor to be deputed to that office. I planted him in an upper 
box, pretty nearly over the stage, in full view of the pit and galleries, 
and perfectly well situated to give the echo all its play through the 
hollows and recesses of the theatre. The success of our manoeuvre 
was complete. All eyes were upon Johnson, who sat in a front row 



232 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

of a side-box ; and when he laughed, everybody thought themselves 
warranted to roar. In the meantime, my friend followed signals with 
a rattle so irresistibly comic, that, when he had repeated it several 
times, the attention of the spectators was so engrossed by his person 
and performances, that the progress of the play seemed likely to be- 
come a secondary object, and I found it prudent to insinuate to him 
that he might halt his music without any prejudice to the author ; but 
alas ! it was now too late to rein him in ; he had laughed upon my 
signal where he found no joke, and now, unluckily, he fancied that he 
found a joke in almost everything that was said ; so that nothing in 
nature could be more mal-apropos than some of his bursts every now 
and then were. These were dangerous moments, for the pit began to 
take umbrage ; but we carried our point through, and triumphed not 
only over Colman's judgment, but our own." 

Much of this statement has been condemned as exaggerated or 
discolored. Cumberland's memoirs have generally been character- 
ized as partaking of romance, and in the present instance he had 
particular motives for tampering with the truth. He was a 
dramatic writer himself, jealous of the success of a rival, and 
anxious to have it attributed to the private management of 
friends. According to various accounts, public and private, such 
management was unnecessary, for the piece was " received through- 
out with the greatest acclamations." 

Goldsmith, in the present instance, ' had not dared, as on a 
former occasion, to be present at the first performance. He had 
been so overcome by his apprehensions that, at the preparatory 
dinner, he could hardly utter a word, and was so choked that he 
could not swallow a mouthful. When his friends trooped to the 
theatre, he stole away to St. James's Park : there he was found 
by a friend, between seven and eight o'clock, wandering up and 
down the Mall like a troubled spirit. With difficulty he was 
persuaded to go to the theatre, where his presence might be 
important should any alteration be necessary. He arrived at the 
opening of the fifth act, and made his way behind the scenes. 
Just as he entered there was a slight hiss at the improbability of 
Tony Lumpkin's trick on his mother, in persuading her she was 



SQUIBS ANB CRACKERS. 233 

forty miles off, on CrackskuU Common, though she had been 
trundled about on her own grounds. "What's that? what's 
that ! " cried Goldsmith to the manager, in great agitation. 
"Pshaw! Doctor," replied Colman, sarcastically, "don't be 
frightened at a squib, when we've been sitting these two hours on 
a barrel of gunpowder ! " Though of a most forgiving nature. 
Goldsmith did not easily forget this ungracious and ill-timed sally. 

If Colman was indeed actuated by the paltry motives ascribed 
to him in his treatment of this play, he was most amply punished 
by its success, and by the taunts, epigrams, and censures levelled 
at him through the press, in which his false prophecies were jeered 
at, his critical judgment called in question, and he was openly 
taxed with literary jealousy. So galling and unremitting was the 
fire, that he at length wrote to Goldsmith, entreating him "to 
take him off the rack of the newspapers " ; in the meantime, to 
escape the laugh that was raised about him in the theatrical world 
of London, he took refuge in Bath during the triumphant career of 
the comedy. 

The following is one of the many squibs which assailed the ears 
of the manager : — 

TO GEORGE COLMAN, ESQ., 

ON THE SUCCESS OF DE. GOLDSMITH'S NEW COMEDY. 

"Come, Coley, doff those mourning weeds, 
Nor thus with jokes be flamm'd ; 
Tho' Goldsmith's present play succeeds, 
His next may still be damn'd. 

*' As this has 'scaped without a fall, 
To sink his next prepare ; 
New actors hire from Wapping Wall, 
And dresses from Rag Fair. 

"For scenes let tatter'd blankets fly, 
The prologue Kelly write ; 
Then swear again the piece must die 
Before the author's night. 



234 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

" Should these tricks fail, the lucky elf, 
To bring to lasting shame, 
E'en write the best you can yourself, 
And print it in his namey 

The solitary hiss, which had startled Goldsmith, was ascribed 
by some of the newspaper scribblers to Cumberland himself, who 
was " manifestly miserable " at the delight of the audience; or to 
Ossian Macpherson, who was hostile to the whole Johnson clique, 
or to Goldsmith's dramatic rival, Kelly. The following is one of 
the epigrams which appeared : — 

"At Dr. Goldsmith's merry play, 
All the spectators laugh, they say ; 
The assertion, sir, I must deny. 
For Cumberland and Kelly cry. 

Bide si sapis^ 

Another, addressed to Goldsmith, alludes to Kelly's early appren- 
ticeship to stay-making : — 

" If Kelly finds fault with the shape of your muse, 
And thinks that too loosely it plays. 
He surely, dear Doctor, will never refuse 
To make it a new Fair of Stays I " 

Cradock had returned to the country before the production of 
the play ; the following letter, written just after the performance, 
gives an additional picture of the thorns which beset an author in 
the path of theatrical literature : — 

" My dear Sir, — 

"The play has met with a success much beyond your expectations 
or mine. I thank you sincerely for your epilogue, which, however, 
could not be used, but with your permission shall be printed. The 
story in short is this. Murphy sent me rather the outline of an epilogue 
than an epilogue, which was to be sung by Miss Catley, and which 
she approved ; Mrs. Bulkley, hearing this, insisted on throwing up 
her part" {Miss Hardcastle) " unless, according to the custom of the 
theatre, she were permitted to speak the epilogue. In this embarrass- 
ment I thought of making a quarrelling epilogue between Catley and 



DEDICATION. 235 

her, debating ivho should speak the epilogue ; but then Miss Catley 
refused after I had taken the trouble of drawing it out. I was then at 
a loss indeed ; an epilogue was to be made, and for none but Mrs. 
Bulkley. I made one, and Colman thought it too bad to be spoken ; 
I was obliged, therefore, to. try a fourth time, and I made a very 
mawkish thing, as you'll shortly see. Such is the history of my stage 
adventures, and which I have at last done with. I cannot help say- 
ing that I am very sick of the stage ; and though I believe I shall get 
three tolerable benefits, yet I shall, on the whole, be a loser, even in a 
pecuniary light ; my ease and comfort I certainly lost while it was in 
agitation. 

" I am, my dear Cradock, your obliged and obedient servant, 

" Oliver Goldsmith, 

" P.S. — Present my most humble respects to Mrs. Cradock." 

Jolinson, who had taken such a conspicuous part in promoting 
the interest of poor " Goldy," was triumphant at the success of 
the piece. " I know of no comedy for many years," said he, 
" that has so much exhilarated an audience ; that has answered so 
much the great end of comedy — making an audience merry." 

Goldsmith was happy, also, in gleaning applause from less author- 
itative sources. ISTorthcote, the painter, then a youthful pupil of 
Sir Joshua Reynolds, and Ralph, Sir Joshua's confidential man, 
had taken their stations in the gallery to lead the applause in 
that quarter. Goldsmith asked Korth cote's opinion of the play. 
The youth modestly declared he could not presume to judge on 
such matters. " Did it make you laugh ? " " Oh, exceedingly ! " 
" That is all I require," replied Goldsmith ; and rewarded him for 
his criticism by box-tickets for his first benefit-night. 

The comedy was immediately put to press, and dedicated to 
Johnson in the following grateful and affectionate terms : — 

" In ascribing this slight performance to you, I do not mean so nuich 
to compliment you as myself. It may do me some honor to inform the 
public that I have lived many years in intimacy with you. It may 
serve the interests of mankind also to inform them, that the greatest 
wit may be found in a character, without impairing the most unaffected 
piety." 



236 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

The copyright was transferred to Mr. Newbery, according to 
agreement, whose profits on the sale of the work far exceeded the 
debts for which the author in his perplexities had preengaged it. 
The sum which accrued to Goldsmith from his benefit-nights 
afforded but a slight palliation of his pecuniary difficulties. His 
friends, while they exulted in his success, little knew of his contin- 
ually increasing embarrassments, and of the anxiety of mind which 
kept tasking his pen while it impaired the ease and freedom of 
spirit necessary to felicitous composition. 



CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

The triumphant success of She Stoops to Conquer brought 
forth, of course, those carpings and cavillings of underling scrib- 
blers, which are the thorns and briers in the path of successful 
authors. Goldsmith, though easily nettled by attacks of the kind, 
w^as at present too well satisfied with the reception of his comedy 
to heed them ; but the following anonymous letter, which appeared 
in a public paper, was not to be taken with equal equanimity : — - 

{For the London Packet.) 
"TO DR. GOLDSMITH. 

" Vous vous noyez par vanite. 

" Sir, — The happy knack which you have learned of puffing your 
own compositions provokes me to come forth. You have not been the 
editor of newspapers and magazines ,not to discover the trick of lit- 
erary humbug ; but the gauze is so thin that the very foolish part of 
the world see through it, and discover the Doctor's monkey-face and 
cloven foot. Your poetic vanity is as unpardonable as your personal. 
Would man believe it, and will woman bear it, to be told that for 
hours the great Goldsmith will stand surveying his grotesque orang- 
outang's figure in a pier-glass ? Was but the lovely H — k as much 
enamored, you would not sigh, my gentle swain, in vain. But your 
vanity is preposterous. How will this same bard of Bedlam ring the 
changes in the praise of Goldy ! But wdiat has he to be either proud 



A NEWSPAPER ATTACK. 237 

or vain of ? The Traveller is a flimsy poem, built upon false princi- 
ples — principles diametrically opposite to liberty. What is llie Good- 
natured Man but a poor, water-gruel dramatic dose ? What is The 
Deserted Village but a pretty poem of easy numbers, without fancy, 
dignity, genius, or fire ? And, pray, what may be the last speaking 
pantomime, so praised by the Doctor himself, but an incoherent piece 
of stuff, the figure of a woman with a fish's tail, without plot, incident, 
or intrigue ? We are made to laugh at stale, dull jokes, wherein we 
mistake pleasantry for wit, and grimace for humor ; wherein every 
scene is unnatural and inconsistent with the rules, the laws of nature 
and of the drama ; viz. : two gentlemen come to a man of fortune's 
house, eat, drink, &c., and take it for an inn. The one is intended as 
a lover for the daughter : he talks with her for some hours ; and, when 
he sees her again in a different dress, he treats her as a bar-girl, and 
swears she squinted. He abuses the master of the house, and threat- 
ens to kick him out of his own doors. The squire, whom we are told 
is to be a fool, proves to be the most sensible being of the piece ; and 
he makes out a whole act by bidding his mother lie close behind a 
bush, persuading her that his father, her own husband, is a highway- 
man, and that he has come to cut their throats ; and, to give his cousin 
an opportunity to go off, he drives his mother over hedges, ditches, and 
through ponds. There is not, sweet, sucking Johnson, a natural stroke 
in the whole play but the young fellow's giving the stolen jewels to the 
mother, supposing her to be the landlady. That Mr. Colman did no 
justice to this piece, I honestly allow ; that he told all his friends it 
would be damned, I positively aver ; and, from such ungenerous insin- 
uations, without a dramatic merit, it rose to public notice, and it is now 
the ton to go and see it, though I never saw a person that either liked 
it or approved it, any more than the absurd plot of Home's tragedy of 
Alonzo. Mr. Goldsmith, correct your arrogance, reduce your vanity, 
and endeavor to believe, as a man, you are of the plainest sort, — and~ 
as an author, but a mortal piece of mediocrity. 

" Brise le miroir infidele 
Qui vous cache la v^rite. 

"Tom Tickle." 

It would be difficult to devise a letter more calculated to wound 
the peculiar sensibilities of Goldsmith. The attacks upon him as 
an author, though annoying enough, he could have tolerated ; but 
then the allusion to his " grotesque " person ; to his studious at- 



238 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

tempts to adorn it ; and, above all, to his being an unsuccessful 
admirer of the lovely H — k (the Jessamy Bride), struck rudely 
upon the most sensitive part of his highly sensitive nature. The 
paragraph, it is said, was first pointed out to him by an officious 
friend, an Irishman, who told him he was bound in honor to resent 
it ; but he needed no such prompting. He was in a high state of 
excitement and indignation, and, accompanied by his friend, who is 
said to have been a Captain Higgins, of the marines, he repaired 
to Paternoster Row, to the shop of Evans, the publisher, whom he 
supposed to be the editor of the paper. Evans was summoned by 
his shopman from an adjoining room. Goldsmith announced his 
name. " I have called," added he, " in consequence of a scurrilous 
attack made upon me, and an unwarrantable liberty taken with 
the name of a young lady. As for myself, I care little ; but her 
name must not be sported with." 

Evans professed utter ignorance of the matter, and said he 
would speak to the editor. He stooped to examine a file of the 
paper, in search of the oifensive article; whereupon Goldsmith's 
friend gave him a signal, that now was a favorable moment for 
the exercise of his cane. The hint was taken as quick as given, 
and the cane was vigorously applied to the back of the stooping 
publisher. The latter rallied in an instant, and, being a stout, 
high-blooded Welshman, returned the blows with interest. A 
lamp hanging overhead was broken, and sent down a shower of oil 
upon the combatants ; but the battle raged with unceasing fury. 
The shopman ran off for a constable ; but Dr. Kenrick, who 
happened to be in the adjacent room, sallied forth, interfered 
between the combatants, and put an end to the affray. He con- 
ducted Goldsmith to a coach, in exceedingly battered and tattered 
plight, and accompanied him home, soothing him with much mock 
commiseration, though he was generally suspected, and on good 
grounds, to be the author of the libel. 

Evans immediately instituted a suit against Goldsmith for an 
assault, but was ultimately prevailed upon to compromise the 
matter, the poet contributing fifty pounds to the Welsh charity. 



THE EVANS AFFRAY. 239 

Newspapers made themselves, as may well be supposed, exceed- 
ingly merry with the combat. Some censured him severely for 
invading the sanctity of a man's own house ; others accused him 
of having, in his former capacity of editor of a magazine, been 
guilty of the very offences that he now resented in others. This 
drew from him the following vindication : — 

''To the Public. 

" Lest it should be supposed that I have been willing to correct in 
others an abuse of which I have been guilty myself, I beg leave to 
declare, that, in all my life, I never wrote or dictated a single para- 
graph, letter, or essay in a newspaper, except a few moral essays 
under the character of a Chinese, about ten years ago, in the 
Ledger^ and a letter, to which I signed my name, in the St. James's 
Chronicle. If the liberty of the press, therefore, has been abused, I 
have had no hand in it. 

"I have always considered the press as the protector of our free- 
dom, as a watchful guardian, capable of uniting the weak against the 
encroachments of power. What concerns the public most properly 
admits of a public discussion. But, of late, the press has turned from 
defending public interest to making inroads upon private life ; from 
combating the strong to overwhelming the feeble. No condition is 
now too obscure for its abuse, and the protector has become the 
tyrant of the people. In this manner the freedom of the press is 
beginning to sow the seeds of its own dissolution ; the great must 
oppose it from principle, and the weak from fear ; till at last every 
rank of mankind shall be found to give up its benefits, content with 
security from insults. 

" How to put a stop to this licentiousness, by which all are indis- 
criminately abused, and by which vice consequently escapes in the 
general censure, I am unable to tell ; all I could wish is, that, as the 
law gives us no protection against the injury, so it should give calum- 
niators no shelter after having provoked correction. The insults 
which we receive before the public, by being more open, are the 
more distressing ; by treating them with silent contempt we do not 
pay a sufficient deference to the opinion of the world. By recurring 
to legal redress we too often expose the weakness of the law, which 
only serves to increase our mortification by failing to relieve us. In 
short, every man should singly consider himself as the guardian of 



240 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

the liberty of the press, and, as far as his influence can extend, 
should endeavor to prevent its licentiousness becoming at last the 
grave of its freedom, 

"Oliver Goldsmith." 

Bos well, who had just arrived in town, met with this article in 
a newspaper which he found at Dr. Johnson's. The Doctor was 
from home at the time, and Bozzy and Mrs. Williams, in a critical 
conference over the letter, determined from the style that it must 
have been written by the lexicographer himself The latter on 
his return soon undeceived them. " Sir," said he to Boswell, 
"Goldsmith would no more have asked me to have wrote such a 
thing as that for him than he would have asked me to feed him 
with a spoon, or do anything else that denoted his imbecility. 
Sir, had he shown it to any one friend, he would not have 
been allowed to publish it. He has, indeed, done it very well ; 
but it is a foolish thing well done. I suppose he has been so 
much elated with the success of his new comedy, that he has 
thought everything that concerned him must be of importance to 
the public." 

CHAPTER XXXIX. 

The return of Boswell to town to his task of noting down the 
conversations of Johnson, enables us to glean from his journal 
some scanty notices of Goldsmith. It was now Holy- Week, a 
time during which Johnson was particularly solemn in his manner 
and strict in his devotions. Boswell, who was the imitator of the 
great moralist in everything, assufned, of course, an extra devout- 
ness on the present occasion.' "He had an odd mock solemnity 
of tone and manner," said Miss Burney, (afterwards Madame 
D'Arblay,) " which he had acquired from constantly thinking, and 
imitating Dr. Johnson." It would seem that he undertook to 
deal out some second-hand homilies, a la Johnson, for the edifica- 
tion of Goldsmith during Holy- Week. The poet, whatever might 
be his religious feeling, had no disposition to be schooled by so 



BINNEB AT OGLETHORPE" 8. 241 

shallow an apostle. "Sir," said he in reply, "as I take my shoes 
from the shoemaker, and my coat from the tailor, so I take my 
religion from the priest." 

Boswell treasured up the reply in his memory or his memoran- 
dum-book. A few days afterwards, the 9th of April, he kept Good 
Friday with Dr. Johnson, in orthodox style ; breakfasted with him 
on tea and cross-buns ; went to church with him morning and 
evening ; fasted in the interval, and read with him in the Greek 
Testament : then, in the piety of his heart, complained of the sore 
rebuff he had met with in the course of his religious exhortations to 
the poet, and lamented that the latter should indulge in "this 
loose way of talking." " Sir," replied Johnson, " Goldsmith knows 
nothing — he has made up his mind about nothing." 

This reply seems to have gratified the lurking jealousy of Bos- 
well, and he has recorded it in his journal. Johnson, however, 
with respect to Goldsmith, and indeed with respect to everybody 
else, blew hot as well as cold, according to the humor he was in. 
Boswell, who was astonished and piqued at the continually increas- 
ing celebrity of the poet, observed some time after to Johnson, in 
a tone of surprise, that Goldsmith had acquired more fame than all 
the officers of the last war who were not generals. " Why, sir," 
answered Johnson, his old feeling of good- will working uppermost, 
"you will find ten thousand fit to do what they did, before you 
find one to do what Goldsmith has done. You must consider that 
a thing is valued according to its rarity. A pebble that paves the 
street is in itself more useful than the diamond upon a lady's finger." 

On the 13th of April we find Goldsmith and Johnson at the 
table of old General Oglethorpe, discussing the question of the 
degeneracy of the human race. Goldsmith asserts the fact, and 
attributes it to the influence of luxury. Johnson denies the fact, 
and observes, that, even admitting it, luxury could not be the 
cause. It reached but a small proportion of the human race. 
Soldiers, on sixpence a day, could not indulge in luxuries ; the poor 
and laboring classes, forming the great mass of mankind, were out 
of its sphere. Wherever it could reach them, it strengthened them 



242 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

and rendered, them prolific. The conversation was not of particu- 
lar force or point as reported by Boswell ; the dinner-party was a 
very small one, in which there was no provocation to intellectual 
display. 

After dinner they took tea with the ladies, where we find poor 
Goldsmith happy and at home, singing Tony Lumpkin's song of 
the " Three Jolly Pigeons," and another, called the " Humors of 
Ballamaguery," to a very pretty Irish tune. It was to have been 
introduced in She Stoops to Conquer, but was left out, as the 
actress who played the heroine could not sing. It was in these 
genial moments that the sunshine of Goldsmith's nature would 
break out, and he would say and do a thousand whimsical and 
agreeable things that made him the life of the strictly social circle. 
Johnson, with whom conversation was everything, used to judge 
Goldsmith too much by his own colloquial standard, and under- 
value him for being less provided than himself with acquired facts, 
the ammunition of the tongue and often the mere lumber of the 
memory ; others, however, valued him for the native felicity of his 
thoughts, however carelessly expressed, and for certain good-fellow 
qualities, less calculated to dazzle than to endear. "It is amaz- 
ing," said Johnson one day, after he himself had been talking like 
an oracle ; " it is amazing how little Goldsmith knows ; he seldom 
comes where he is not more ignorant than any one else." " Yet," 
replied Sir Joshua Reynolds, with affectionate promptness, " there 
is no man whose company is more liked." 

Two or three days after the dinner at General Oglethorpe's, 
Goldsmith met Johnson again at. the table of General Paoli, the 
hero of Corsica. Martinellij of Florence, author of an Italian 
History of England, was among the guests ; as was Boswell, to 
whom we are indebted for minutes of the conversation which took 
place. The question was debated whether Martinelli should con- 
tinue his history down to that day. " To be sure he should," said 
Goldsmith. " No, sir," cried Johnson, " it would give great offence. 
He would have to tell of almost all the living great what they did 
not wish told." Goldsmith. — "It may, perhaps, be necessary for 



THE POLICY OF TRUTH. 243 

a native to be more cautious ; but a foreigner, who comes among us 
without prejudice, may be considered as holding the place of a 
judge, and may speak his mind freely." Johnson. — " Sir, a 
foreigner, when he sends a work from the press, ought to be on his 
guard against catching the error and mistaken enthusiasm of the 
people among whom he happens to be." Goldsmith. — "Sir, he 
wants only to sell his history, and to tell truth ; one an honest, 
the other a laudable motive." Johnson. — " Sir, they are both 
laudable motives. It is laudable in a man to wish to live by his 
labors ; but he should write so as he may live by them, not so as 
he -may be knocked on the head. I would advise him to be at 
Calais before he publishes his history of the present age. A 
foreigner who attaches himself to a political party in this country 
is in the worst state that can be imagined ; he is looked upon as a 
mere intermeddler. A native may do it from interest." Boswell. 
— "Or principle." Goldsmith. — "There are people who tell a 
hundred political lies every day, and are not hurt by it. Surely, 
then, one may tell truth with perfect safety." Johnson. — " Why, 
sir, in the first place, he who tells a hundred lies has disarmed the 
force of his lies. But, besides, a man had rather have a hundred 
lies told of him than one truth which he does not wish to be told." 
Goldsmith. — "For my part, I'd tell the truth, and shame the 
devil." Johnson. — "Yes, sir, but the devil will be angry. I 
wish to shame the devil as much as you do, but I should choose to 
be out of the reach of his claws." Goldsmith. — " His claws can 
do you no hurt where you have the shield of truth." 

This last reply was one of Goldsmith's lucky hits, and closed 
the argument in his favor. 

"We talked," writes Boswell, "of the King's coming to see 
Goldsmith's new play." " I wish he would," said Goldsmith, 
adding, however, with an affected indifference, " not that it would 
dome the least good." "Well, then," cried Johnson, laughing, 
" let us say it would do him good. No, sir, this affectation will 
not pass, — it is mighty idle. In such a state as ours, who would 
not. wish to please the chief magistrate ? " 



244 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

^' I do wish to please him," rejoined Goldsmith. " I remember 
a line in Dryden : — 

' ' ' And every poet is the monarch's friend ; ' 

it ought to be reversed." " Nay," said Johnson, " there are finer 
lines in Dryden on this subject : 

" ' For colleges on bounteous kings depend, 
And never rebel was to arts a friend.' " 

General Paoli observed that "successful rebels might be." 
"Happy rebellions," interjected Martinelli. "We have no such 
phrase," cried Goldsmith. "But have you not the thing?" 
asked Paoli. " Yes," replied Goldsmith, "all our ha'ppy revolu- 
tions. They have hurt our constitution, and will hurt it, till we 
mend it by another happy eevolution." This was a sturdy 
sally of Jacobitism, that quite surprised Boswell, but must have 
been relished by Johnson. 

General Paoli mentioned a passage in the play, which had been 
construed into a compliment to a lady of distinction, whose 
marriage with the Duke of Cumberland had excited the strong 
disapprobation of the King as a mesalliance. Boswell, to draw 
Goldsmith out, pretended to think the compliment unintentional. 
The poet smiled and hesitated. The General came to his relief. 
"Monsieur Goldsmith," said he, "est comme la mer, qui jette des 
perles et beaucoup d'autres belles choses, sans s'en appercevoir " 
(Mr. Goldsmith is like the sea, which casts forth pearls and many 
other beautiful things without perceiving it). 

" Tres-bien dit, et tres-dldgamment " (Very well said, and very 
elegantly), exclaimed Goldsmith, delighted with so beautiful a 
compliment from such a quarter. 

Johnson spoke disparagingly of the learning of Mr. Harris, of 
Salisbury, and doubted his being a good Grecian. " He is what 
is much better," cried Goldsmith, with prompt good-nature, — 
"he is a worthy, humane man." "Nay, sir," rejoined the logical 
Johnson, " that is not to the purpose of our argument ; that will 
prove that he can play upon the fiddle as well as Giardini, as that 



QUESTION ABOUT SUICIDE. 245 

he is an eminent Grecian." Goldsmith found he had got into a 
scrape, and seized upon Giardini to help him out of it. " The 
greatest musical performers," said he, dexterously turning the 
conversation, " have but small emoluments ; Giardini, I am told, 
does not get above seven hundred a year." " That is indeed but 
little for a man to get," observed Johnson, " who does best that 
which so many endeavor to do. There is nothing, I think, in 
which the power of art is shown so much as in playing on the 
fiddle. In all other things we can do something at first. Any 
man will forge a bar of iron, if you give him a hammer ; not so 
well as a smith, but tolerably. A man will saw a piece of wood, 
and make a box, though a clumsy one ; but give him a fiddle and 
fiddlestick and he can do nothing." 

This, upon the whole, though reported by the one-sided Boswell, 
is a tolerable specimen of the conversations of Goldsmith and John- 
son ; the former heedless, often illogical, always on the kind-hearted 
side of the question, and prone to redeem himself by lucky hits ; 
the latter closely argumentative, studiously sententious, often 
profound, and sometimes laboriously prosaic. 

They had an argument a few days later at Mr. Thrale's table, 
on the subject of suicide. "Do you think, sir," said Boswell, 
" that all who commit suicide are mad ? " " Sir," replied Johnson, 
" they are not often universally disordered in their intellects, but 
one passion presses so upon them that they yield to it, and com- 
mit suicide, as a passionate man will stab another„ I have often 
thought," added he, "that after a man has taken the resolution 
to kill himself, it is not courage in him to do anything, however 
desperate, because he has nothing to fear." " I don't see that," 
observed Goldsmith. " Nay, but, my dear sir," rejoined Johnson, 
" why should you not see what every one else does ? " "It is," 
replied Goldsmith, " for fear of something that he has resolved to 
kill himself ; and will not that timid disposition restrain him ? " 
"It does not signify," pursued Johnson, "that the fear of some- 
thing made him resolve ; it is upon the state of his mind, after the 
resolution is taken, that I argue. Suppose a man, either from 



24:6 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

fear, or pride, or conscience, or whatever motive, has resolved to 
kill himself; when once the resolution is taken he has nothing to 
fear. He may then go and take the King of Prussia by the nose 
at the head of his army. He cannot fear the rack who is deter- 
mined to kill himself." Boswell reports no more of the discussion, 
though Goldsmith might have continued it with advantage : for 
the very timid disposition, which through fear of something was 
impelling the man to commit suicide, might restrain him from an 
act involving the punishment of the rack, more terrible to him 
than death itself. 

It is to be regretted in all these reports by Boswell, we have 
scarcely anything but the remarks of Johnson ; it is only by acci- 
dent that he now and then gives us the observations of others, 
when they are necessary to explain or set off those of his hero. 
" When in that presence," says Miss Burney, " he was unobservant, 
if not contemptuous of every one else. In truth, when he met 
with Dr. Johnson, he commonly forbore even answering anything 
that was said, or attending to anything that went forward, lest he 
should miss the smallest sound from that voice, to which he paid 
such exclusive, though merited homage. But the moment that 
voice burst forth, the attention which it excited on Mr. Boswell 
amounted almost to pain. His eyes goggled with eagerness ; he 
leant his ear almost on the shoulder of the Doctor ; and his mouth 
dropped open to catch every syllable that might be uttered ; nay, 
he seemed not only to dread losing a word, but to be anxious not 
to miss a breathing, as if hoping from it latently, or mystically, 
some information." 

On one occasion the Doctor detected Boswell, or Bozzy, as he 
called him, eavesdropping behind his chair, as he was conversing 
with Miss Burney at Mr. Thrale's table. " What are you doing 
there, sir ? " cried he, turning round angrily, and clapping his hand 
upon his knee. " Go to the table, sir." 

Boswell obeyed with an air of affright and submission, which 
raised a smile on every face. Scarce had he taken his seat, how- 
ever, at a dista.nce, than, impatient to get again at the side of 



BO swell's subserviency. 247 

Johnson, he rose and was running off in quest of something to 
show him, when the Doctor roared after him authoritatively, 
" What are you thinking of, sir? Why do you get up before the 
cloth is removed ? Come back to your place, sir ; " — and the 
obsequious spaniel did as he was commanded. — " Running about 
in the middle of meals ! " muttered the Doctor, pursing his mouth 
at the same time to restrain his rising risibility. 

Boswell got another rebuff from Johnson, which would have 
demolished any other man. He had been teasing him with many 
direct questions, such as, "What did you do, sir? — What did you 
say, sir?" until the great philologist became perfectly enraged. 
" I will not be put to the question I " roared he. " Don't you 
consider, sir, that these are not the manners of a gentleman ? I 
will not be baited with what and why ; — What is this ? What' 
is that? Why is a cow's tail long? Why is a fox's tail bushy?" 
"Why, sir," replied pilgarlick, "you are so good that I venture to 
trouble you." "Sir," replied Johnson, "my being so ^ooc? is no 
reason why you should be so iliy "You have but two topics, 
sir," exclaimed he on another occasion, "yourself and me, and I 
am sick of both." 

Boswell's inveterate disposition to toad^ was a sore cause of 
mortification to his father, the old laird of Auchinleck (or Affleck). 
He had been annoyed by his extravagant devotion to Paoli, but 
then he was something of a military hero ; but this tagging at the 
heels of l^jjfeohnson, whom he considered a kind of pedagogue, set 
his S^^WBlood in a ferment. "There's nae hope for Jamie, 
mon," iHWhe to a friend ; — " Jamie is gaen clean gyte. What 
do you think, mon ? He's done wi' Paoli ; he's off wi' the land- 
louping scoundrel of a Corsican ; and whose tail do you think he 
has pinn'd himself to now, mon ? A dominie, mon ; an auld 
dominie ; he keeped a schule, and cau'd it an acaadamy." 

We shall show in the next chapter that Jamie's devotion to the 
dominie did not go unrewarded. 



248 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 



CHAPTER XL. 



The Literary Club (as we have termed the ckib in Gerard 
Street, though it took that name some time later) had now been 
in existence several years. Johnson was exceedingly chary at first 
of its exclusiveness, and opposed to its being augmented in number. 
Wot long after its institution, Sir Joshua Reynolds was speaking 
of it to Garrick. " I like it much," said little David, briskly ; "I 
think I shall be of you." " When Sir Joshua mentioned this to 
Dr. Johnson," says Boswell, "he was much displeased with the 
actor's conceit. ' He'll be of us ? ' growled he. ' How does he 
know we will permit him 1 The first duke in England has no 
right to hold such langTiage.' " 

When Sir John Hawkins spoke favorably of Garrick's preten- 
sions, " Sir," replied Johnson, " he will disturb us by his buffoon- 
ery." In the same spirit he declared to Mr. Thrale, that, if 
Garrick should apply for admission, he would black-ball him. 
" Who, sir 1 " exclaimed Thrale, with surprise ; " Mr. Garrick — 
your friend, your companion — black-ball him!" "Why, sir," 
replied Johnson, "I love my little David dearly — better than all 
or any of his flatterers do ; but surely one ought to sit in a society 

like ours, . 

" ' Unelbowed by a gamester, pimp, or player,' *' i 

The exclusion from the club was a sore mortification to Garrick, 
though he bore it without complaining. He could not help con- 
tinually to ask questions about it — what was going on there — 
whether he was ever the subject of 'conversation. By degrees the 
rigor of the club relaxed: sonie of the members grew negligent. 
Beauclerc lost his right of membership by neglecting to attend. 
On his marriage, however, with Lady Diana Spencer, daughter of 
the Duke of Marlborough, and recently divorced from Viscount 
Bolingbroke, he had claimed and regained his seat in the club. 
The number of members had likewise been augmented. The prop- 
osition to increase it originated with Goldsmith. "It would 



r^ 



ELECTION OF BOS WELL. 249 

give," he thought, " an agreeable variety to their meetings ; for 
there can be nothing new amongst us," said he ; " we have travelled 
over each other's minds." Johnson was piqued at the suggestion. 
" Sir," said he, " you have not travelled over my mind, I promise 
you." Sir Joshua, less confident in the exhaustless fecundity of 
his mind, felt and acknowledged the force of Goldsmith's sugges- 
tion. Several new members, therefore, had been added ; the first, 
to his great joy, was David Garrick. Goldsmith, who was now 
on cordial terms with him, had zealously promoted his election, 
and Johnson had given it his warm approbation. Another new 
member was Beauclerc's friend. Lord Charlemont ; and a still more 
important one was Mr. (afterwards Sir William) Jones, the famous 
Orientalist, at that time a young lawyer of the Temple and a dis- 
tinguished scholar. 

To the great astonishment of the club, Johnson now proposed 
his devoted follower, Boswell, as a member. He did it in a note 
addressed to Goldsmith, who presided on the evening of the 23d of 
April. The nomination was seconded by Beauclerc. According 
to the rules of the club, the ballot would take place at the next 
meeting (on the 30th) ; there was an intervening week, therefore, 
in which to discuss the pretensions of the candidate. We may 
easily imagine the discussions that took place. Boswell had made 
himself absurd in such a variety of ways that the very idea of his 
admission was exceedingly irksome to some of the members. " The 
honor of being elected into the Turk's Head Club," said the Bishop 
of St. Asaph, " is not inferior to that of being representative of 
Westminster and Surrey ; " what had Boswell done to merit such 
an honor ? What chance had he of gaining it ? The answer was 
simple : he had been the persevering worshipper, if not sycophant 
of Johnson. The great lexicographer had a heart to be won by 
apparent affection ; he stood forth authoritatively in support of his 
vassal. If asked to state the merits of the candidate, he summed 
them up in an indefinite but comprehensive word of his own coin- 
ing: — he was clubahle. He moreover gave significant hints that 
if Boswell were kept out he should oppose the admission of any 



250 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

other candidate. No further opposition was made ; in fact none of 
the members had been so fastidious and exchisive in regard to the 
club as Johnson himself; and if he were pleased, they were easily 
satisfied : besides, they knew that, with all his faults, Boswell was 
a cheerful companion, and possessed lively social qualities. 

On Friday, when the ballot was to take place, Beauclerc gave a 
dinner, at his house in the Adelphi, where Boswell met several of 
the members who were favorable to his election. After dinner the 
latter adjourned to the club, leaving Boswell in company with 
Lady Di Beauclerc until the fate of his election should be known. 
He sat, he says, in a state of anxiety which even the charming 
conversation of Lady Di could not entirely dissipate. It was not 
long before tidings were brought of his election, and he was con- 
ducted to the place of meeting, where, beside the company he had 
met at dinner, Burke, Dr. Nugent, Garrick, Goldsmith, and Mr. 
William Jones were waiting to receive him. The club, notwith- 
standing all its learned dignity in the eyes of the world, could at 
times " unbend and play the fool " as well as less important bodies. 
Some of its jocose conversations have at times leaked out, and 
a society in which Goldsmith could venture to sing his song of " an 
old woman tossed in a blanket," could not be so very staid in its 
gravity. We may suppose, therefore, the jokes that had been 
passing among the members while awaiting the arrival of Bos- 
well. Beauclerc himself could not have repressed his disposition 
for a sarcastic pleasantry. At least we have a right to presume 
all this from the conduct of Dr. Johnson himself 

With all his gravity he possessed a deep fund of quiet humor, 
and felt a kind of whimsical responsibility to protect the club from 
the absurd propensities of the very questionable associate he had 
thus inflicted on them. Rising, therefore, as Boswell entered, he 
advanced with a very doctorial air, placed himself behind a chair, 
on which he leaned as on a desk or pulpit, and then delivered, ex 
cathedra, a mock solemn charge, pointing out the conduct expected 
fro n him as a good member of the club ; what he was to do, and 
especially what he was to avoid; including in the latter, no doubt, 



CONVERSATION ON NATURAL HISTORY. 251 

all those petty, prying, questioning, gossiping, babbling habits 
which had so often grieved the spirit of the lexicographer. It is 
to be regretted that Boswell has never thought proper to note 
down the particulars of this change, which, from the well-known 
characters and positions of the parties, might have furnished a 
parallel to the noted charge of Launcelot Gobbo to his dog. 



CHAPTER XLL 

A FEW days after the serio-comic scene of the elevation of Boswell 
into the Literary Club, we find that indefatigable biographer giving 
particulars of a dinner at the Dillys', booksellers, in the Poultry, at 
which he met Goldsmith and Johnson, with several other literary 
characters. His anecdotes of the conversation, of course, go to 
glorify Dr. Johnson ; for, as he observes in his biography, " his 
conversation alone, or what led to it, or was interwoven with it, 
is the business of this work." Still on the present, as on other oc- 
casions, he gives unintentional and perhaps unavoidable gleams of 
Goldsmith's good sense, which show that the latter only wanted a 
less prejudiced and more impartial reporter, to put down the charge 
of colloquial incapacity so unjustly fixed upon him. The conversa- 
tion turned upon the natural history of birds, a beautiful subject, 
on which the poet, from his recent studies, his habits of observation, 
and his natural tastes, must have talked with instruction and feel- 
ing ; yet, though we have much of what Johnson said, we have 
only a casual remark or two of Goldsmith. One was on the migra- 
tion of swallows, which he pronounced partial ; " the stronger ones," 
said he, "migrate, the others do not." 

Johnson denied to the brute creation the faculty of reason. 
" Birds," said he, " build by instinct ; they never improve ; they 
build their first nest as well^as any one they ever- build." "Yet 
we see," observed Goldsmith, "if you take away a bird's-nest with 
the eggs in it, she will make a slighter nest and lay again." " Sir," 
replied Johnson, " that is because at first she has full time, and 



252 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. , 

makes her nest deliberately. In the case you mention, she is 
pressed to lay, and must, therefore, make her nest quickly, and 
consequently it will be slight." " The nidification of birds," 
rejoined Goldsmith, "is what is least known in natural 
history, though one of the most curious things in it." While con- 
versation was going on in this placid, agreeable, and instructive 
manner, the eternal meddler and busybody, Boswell, must intrude 
to put in a brawl. The Dillys were dissenters ; two of their guests 
were dissenting clergymen ; another, Mr. Toplady, was a clergy- 
man of the established church. Johnson himself was a zealous, 
uncompromising churchman. None but a marplot like Boswell 
would have thought, on such an occasion and in such company, to 
broach the subject of religious toleration ; but, as has been well ob- 
served, "it was his perverse inclination to introduce subjects that 
he hoped would produce difference and debate." In the present 
instance he gained his point. An animated dispute immediately 
arose, in which, according to Boswell's report, Johnson monopolized 
the greater part of the conversation ; not always treating the dis- 
senting clergymen with the greatest curtesy, and even once wound- 
ing the feelings of the mild and amiable Bennet Langton by his 
harshness. 

Goldsmith mJngled a little in the dispute and with some advan- 
tage, but was cut short by flat contradictions when most in the 
right. He sat for a time silent but impatient under such over- 
bearing dogmatism, though Boswell, with his usual misinterpreta- 
tion, attributes his " restless agitation " to a wish to get in and 
shine. "Finding himself excluded," continues Boswell, "he had 
taken his hat to go away, but remained for a time with it in his 
hand, like a gamester who at the end of a long night lingers for a 
little while to see if he can have a favorable opportunity to finish 
with success." Once he was beginning to speak, when he was 
overpowered by the loud voice of Johnson, who was at the opposite 
end of the table, and did not perceive his attempt ; whereupon he 
threw down, as it were, his hat and his argument, and, darting an 
angry glance at Johnson, exclaimed in a bitter tone, " Take it." 



JOHNSON'S REBUFF TO GOLDSMITH, 253 

Just then one of the disputants was beginning to speak, when 
Johnson uttering some sound, as if about to interrupt him. Gold- 
smith, according to Boswell, seized the opportunity to vent his own 
envi/ and spleen under pretext of supporting another person. 
" Sir," said he to Johnson, " the gentleman has heard you patiently 
for an hour ; pray allow us now to hear him." It was a reproof 
in the lexicographer's own style, and he may have felt that he mer- 
ited it ; but he was not accustomed to be reproved. " Sir," said 
he, sternly, " I was not interrupting the gentleman ; I was only 
giving him a signal of my attention. Sir, you are impertinent^ 
Goldsmith made no reply, but after some time went away, having 
another engagement. 

That evening, as Boswell was on the way with Johnson and 
Langton to the club, he seized the occasion to make some disparaging 
remarks on Goldsmith, which he thought would just then be accept- 
able to the great lexicographer. "It was a pity," he said, "that 
Goldsmith would on every occasion endeavor to shine, by which he 
so often exposed himself." Langton contrasted him with Addison, 
who, content with the fame of his writings, acknowledged himself unfit 
for conversation ; and on being taxed by a lady with silence in com- 
pany, replied, " Madam, I have but ninepence in ready money, but I 
can draw for a thousand pounds." To this Boswell rejoined that 
Goldsmith had a great deal of gold in his cabinet, but was always 
taking out his purse. " Yes, sir," chuckled Johnson, " and that so 
often an empty purse." 

By the time Johnson arrived at the club, however, his angry 
feelings had subsided, and his native generosity and sense of justice 
had got the uppermost. He found Goldsmith in company with 
Burke, Garrick, and other members, but sitting silent and apart, 
" brooding," as Boswell says, "over the reprimand he had received." 
Johnson's good heart yearned towards him ; and knowing his pla- 
cable nature, " I'll make Goldsmith forgive me," whispered he ; 
then, with a loud voice, "Dr. Goldsmith," said he, "something 
passed to-day where you and I dined, — / ask your pardon.^'' The 
ire of the poet was extinguished in an instant, and his grateful 



254 OLIVEB GOLDSMITH. 

affection for the magnanimous though sometimes overbearing 
moralist rushed to his heart. " It must be much from you, sir," 
said he, "that I take ill! " " And so," adds Boswell, " the differ- 
ence was over, and they were on as easy terms as ever, and Gold- 
smith rattled away as usual." We do not think these stories tell 
to the poet's disadvantage, even though related by Boswell. 

Goldsmith, with all his modesty, could not be ignorant of his 
proper merit, and must have felt annoyed at times at being under- 
valued and elbowed aside by light-minded or dull men, in their 
blind and exclusive homage to tlie literary autocrat. It was a fine 
reproof he gave to Boswell on one occasion, for talking of Johnson 
as entitled to the honor of exclusive superiority. " Sir, you are 
for making a monarchy what should be a republic." On another 
occasion, when he was conversing in company with great vivacity, 
and apparently to the satisfaction of those around him, an honest 
Swiss who sat near, one George Michael Moser, keeper of the Royal 
Academy, perceiving Dr. Johnson rolling himself as if about to 
speak, exclaimed, " Stay, stay ! Toctor Shonson is going to say 
something." "And are you sure, sir," replied Goldsmith, sharply, 
" that you can comprehend what he says ? " 

This clever rebuke, which gives the main zest to the anecdote, 
is omitted by Boswell, who probably did not perceive the point 
of it. 

He relates another anecdote of the kind on the authority of 
Johnson himself The latter and Goldsmith were one evening in 
company with the Rev. George Graham, a master of Eton, who, 
notwithstanding the sobriety of l\is cloth, had got intoxicated " to 
about the pitch of looking at one man and talking to another." 
"Doctor," cried he, in an ecstasy of devotion and good-will, but 
goggling by mistake upon Goldsmith, " I should be glad to see you 
at Eton." " I shall be glad to wait upon you," replied Goldsmith. 
" No, no ! " cried the other, eagerly ; " 'tis not you I mean, Doctor 
Minor, 'tis Doctor Major there." " You may easily conceive," 
said Johnson, in relating the anecdote, " what effect this had upon 
Goldsmith, who was irascible as a hornet." The only comment, 



GOLDSMITH AND JOHNSOJST. 255 

however, which he is said to have made, partakes more of quaint 
and dry humor than bitterness. "That Graham," said he, "is 
enough to make one commit suicide." What more could be said 
to express the intolerable nuisance of a consummate bore ? 

We have now given the last scenes between Goldsmith and 
Johnson which stand recorded by Boswell. The latter called on 
the poet, a few days after the dinner at Billy's, to take leave of him 
prior to departing for Scotland ; yet, even in this last interview, he 
contrives to get up a charge of "jealousy and envy." Goldsmith, 
he would fain persuade us, is very angry that Johnson is going to 
travel with him in Scotland, and endeavors to persuade him that he 
will be a dead weight "to lug along through the Highlands and 
Hebrides." Any one else, knowing the character and habits of 
Johnson, would have thought the same ; and no one but Boswell 
would have supposed his office of bear-leader to the ursa major a 
thing to be envied.^ 

iQne of Peter Pindar's (Dr. Wolcot) most amusing jeux d'esprit is his 
congratulatory epistle to Boswell on this tour, of which we subjoin a few 
lines. 

" O Boswell, Bozzy, Bruce, whate'er thy name, 
Thou mighty shark for anecdote and fame ; 
Thou jackal, leading lion Johnson forth. 
To eat M'Phei'Son 'midst his native north ; 
To frighten grave professors with his roar. 
And shake the Hebrides from shore to shore, 

"y,' ^ ^ -IP 'jc 5^ 

Bless'd be thy labors, most adventurous Bozzy, 

Bold rival of Sir John and Dame Piozzi ; 

Heavens ! with what laurels shall thy head be crown'd ! 

A grove, a forest, shall thy ears surround ! 

Yes ! whilst the Rambler shall a comet blaze, 

And gild a world of darkness with his rays, 

Thee, too, that world with wonderment shall hail, 

A lively, bouncing cracker at his tail! " 



256 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 



CHAPTER XLII. 

The works which Goldsmith had still in hand being already- 
paid for, and the money gone, some new scheme must be devised to 
provide for the past and the future, — for impending debts which 
threatened to crush him, and expenses which were continually in- 
creasing. He now projected a work of greater compass than any he 
had yet undertaken : a Dictionary of Arts and Sciences on a com- 
prehensive scale, which was to occupy a number of volumes. For 
this he received promise of assistance from several powerful hands. 
Johnson was to contribute an article on ethics ; Burke, an ab- 
stract of his Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful, an essay on 
the Berkeley an system of philosophy, and others on political sci- 
ence; Sir Joshua Reynolds, an essay on painting; and Garrick, 
while he undertook on his o'wti part to furnish an essay on acting, 
engaged Dr. Burney to contribute an article on music. Here was 
a great array of talent positively engaged, while other writers of 
eminence were to be sought for the various departments of science. 
Goldsmith was to edit the whole. An undertaking of this kind, 
while it did not incessantly task and exhaust his inventive powers 
by original composition, would give agreeable and profitable exer- 
cise to his taste and judgment in selecting, compiling, and arrang- 
ing, and he calculated to diffuse over the whole the acknowledged 
graces of his style. 

He drew up a prospectus of the plan, which is said by Bishop 
Percy, who saw it, to have been written with uncommon ability, 
and to have had that perspicuity and elegance for which his writ- 
ings are remarkable. This paper, unfortunately, is no longer in 
existence. 

Goldsmith's expectations, always sanguine respecting any new 
plan, were raised to an extraordinary height by the present proj- 
ect ; and well they might be, when we consider the powerful 
coadjutors already pledged. They were doomed, however, to 
complete disappointment. Davies, the bibliopole of Russell 



NEGLIGENT AUTHOESHIP. 25T 

Street, lets us into the secret of this failure. " The booksellers," 
said he, " notwithstanding they had a very good opinion of his 
abilities, yet were startled at the bulk, importance, and expense 
of so great an undertaking, the fate of which was to depend upon 
the industry of a man with whose indolence of temper and method 
of procrastination they had long been acquainted." 

Goldsmith certainly gave reason for some such distrust by the 
heedlessness with w^hich he conducted his literary undertakings. 
Those unfinished, but paid for, would be suspended to make way 
for some job that was to provide for present necessities. Those 
thus hastily taken up would be as hastily executed, and the 
whole, however pressing, would be shoved aside and left " at loose 
ends," on some sudden call to social enjoyment or recreation. 

Cradock tells us that on one occasion, when Goldsmith was 
hard at work on his Natural History, he sent to Dr. Percy and 
himself, entreating them to finish some pages of his work which 
lay upon his table, and for which the press was urgent, he being 
detained by other engagements at Windsor. They met by 
appointment at his chambers in the Temple, where they found 
everything in disorder, and costly books lying scattered about 
on the tables and on the floor; many of the books on natural 
history which he had recently consulted lay open among uncor- 
rected proof-sheets. The subject in hand, and from which he had 
suddenly broken off", related to birds. " Do you know anything 
about birds?" asked Dr. Percy, smiling. "Not an atom," replied 
Cradock; "do you?" " Not I ! I scarcely know a goose from a 
swan ; however, let us try what we can do." They set to work 
and completed their friendly task. Goldsmith, however, when he 
came to revise it, made such alterations that they could neither 
of them recognize their own share. The engagement at Windsor, 
which had thus caused Goldsmith to break off suddenly from his 
multifarious engagements, was a party of pleasure with some 
literary ladies. Another anecdote was current, illustrative of the 
carelessness with which he executed works requiring accuracy and 
research. On the 2 2d of June he had received payment in 



258 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

advance for a Grecian History in two volumes, though only 
one was finished. As he was pushing on doggedly at the second 
volume, Gibbon, the historian, called in. "You are the man of 
all others I wish to see," cried the poet, glad to be saved the 
trouble of reference to his books. " What was the name of that 
Indian king who gave Alexander the Great so much trouble?" 
"Montezuma," replied Gibbon, sportively. The heedless author 
was about committing the name to paper without reflection, when 
Gibbon pretended to recollect himself, and gave the true name, 
Porus. 

This story, very probably, was a sportive exaggeration ; but it 
was a multiplicity of anecdotes like this ' and the preceding one, 
some true and some false, which had impaired the confidence of 
booksellers in Goldsmith as a man to be relied on for a task 
requiring wide and accurate research, and close and long-continued 
application. The project of the Universal Dictionary, therefore, 
met with no encouragement, and fell through. 

The failure of this scheme, on which he had built such spacious 
hopes, sank deep into Goldsmith's heart. He was still further 
grieved and mortified by the failure of an effbrt made by some 
of his friends to obtain for him a pension from government. 
There had been a talk of the disposition of the ministry to extend 
the bounty of the crown to distinguished literaiy men in pecuniary 
difficulty, without regard to their political creed : when the merits 
and claims of Goldsmith, however, were laid before them, they 
met no favor. The sin of sturdy independence lay at his door. 
He had refused to become a ministerial hack when offered a carte 
hlanche by Parson Scott, the cabinet emissary. The wondering 
parson had left him in poverty and "A^s garret,^'' and there the 
ministry were disposed to suffer him to remain. 

In the meantime Dr. Seattle comes out with his Essay on 
Truth, and all the orthodox world are thrown into a paroxysm 
of contagious ecstasy. He is cried up as the great champion of 
Christianity against the attacks of modern philosophers and 
infidels ; he is feted and flattered in every way. He receives at 



BEATTIE'S ''ESSAY ON TRUTH.'' 259 

Oxford the honorary degree of Doctor of Civil Law, at the same 
time with Sir Joshua Reynolds. The King sends for him, praises 
his Essay, and gives him a pension of two hundred pounds, 

Goldsmith feels more acutely the denial of a pension to himself 
when one has thus been given unsolicited to a man he might 
without vanity consider so much his inferior. He was not one to 
conceal his feelings. "Here's such a stir," said he one day at 
Thrale's table, " about a fellow that has written one book, and I 
have written so many ! " 

" Ah, Doctor ! " exclaimed Johnson, in one of his caustic moods, 
" there go two-and-forty sixpences, you know, to one guinea." 
This is one of the cuts at poor Goldsmith in which Johnson went 
contrary to head and heart in his love for saying what is called a 
"good thing." ]S"o one knew better than himself the comparative 
superiority of the writings of Goldsmith ; but the jingle of the 
sixpences and the guinea was not to be resisted. 

" Everybody," exclaimed Mrs. Thrale, " loves Dr. Beattie, but 
Goldsmith, who says he cannot bear the sight of so much applause 
as they all bestow upon him. Did he not tell us so himself, no 
one would believe he was so exceedingly ill-natured." 

He told them so himself because he was too open and unreserved 
to disguise his feelings, and because he really considered the praise 
lavished on Beattie extravagant, as in fact it was. It was all, of 
course, set down to sheer envy and uncharitableness. To add to 
his annoyance, he found his friend, Sir Joshua Reynolds, joining 
in the universal adulation. He had painted a full-length portrait 
of Beattie decked in the doctor's robes in which he had figured at 
Oxford, with the Essay on Truth under his arm and the angel 
of truth at his side, while Voltaire figured as one of the demons 
of infidelity, sophistry, and falsehood, driven into utter dark- 
ness. 

Goldsmith had known Voltaire in early life ; he had been his 
admirer and his biographer ; he grieved to find him receiving such 
an insult from the classic pencil of his friend. " It is unworthy 
of you," said he to Sir Joshua, "to debase so high a genius as 



260 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

Voltaire before so mean a writer as Beattie. Beattie and his book 
will be forgotten in ten years, while Voltaire's fame will last 
forever. Take care it does not perpetuate this picture to the 
shame of such a man as you." This noble and high-minded rebuke 
is the only instance on record of any reproachful words between 
the poet and the painter ; and we are happy to find that it did 
not destroy the harmony of their intercourse. 



CHAPTER XLIII. 

Thwarted in the plans and disappointed in the hopes which 
had recently cheered and animated him, Goldsmith found the labor 
at his half-finished tasks doubly irksome from the consciousness 
that the completion of them could not relieve him from his 
pecuniary embarrassments. His impaired health, also, rendered 
him less capable than formerly of sedentary application, and 
continual perplexities disturbed the flow of thought necessary for 
original composition. He lost his usual gayety and good-humor, 
and became, at times, peevish and irritable. Too proud of spirit 
to seek sympathy or relief from his friends, for the pecuniary 
difficulties he had brought upon himself by his errors and extrava- 
gance, and unwilling, perhaps, to make known their amount, he 
buried his cares and anxieties in his own bosom, and endeavored 
in company to keep up his usual air of gayety and unconcern. 
This gave his conduct an appearance of fitfulness and caprice, 
varying suddenly from moodiness to mirth, and from silent gravity 
to shallow laughter ; causing surprise and ridicule in those who 
were not aware of the sickness of heart which lay beneath. 

His poetical reputation, too, was sometimes a disadvantage to 
him ; it drew upon him a notoriety which he was not always in 
the mood or the vein to act up to. " Good heavens, Mr. Foote," 
exclaimed an actress at the Haymarket Theatre, "what a hum- 
drum kind of man Dr. Goldsmith appears in our green-room 
compared with the figure he makes in his poetry ! " " The reason 



THE POET AT VAUXHALL. 261 

of that, madam," replied Foote, " is because the Muses are better 
company than the players." 

Beauclerc's letters to his friend, Lord Charlemont, who was 
absent in Ireland, give us now and then an indication of the 
whereabout of the poet during the present year. "I have been 
but once to the club since you left England," writes he; "we 
were entertained, as usual, with Goldsmith's absurdity." With 
Beauclerc everything was absurd that was not polished and 
pointed. In another letter he threatens, unless Lord Charlemont 
returns to England, to bring over the whole club, and let them loose 
upon him to drive him home by their peculiar habits of annoyance ; 
— Johnson shall spoil his books ; Goldsmith shall pull his Jiowers ; 
and last, and most intolerable of all, Boswell shall — talk to him. 
It would appear that the poet, who had a passion for flowers, was 
apt to pass much of his time in the garden when on a visit to a 
country-seat, much to the detriment of the flower-beds and the 
despair of the gardener. 

The summer wore heavily away with Goldsmith. He had not 
his usual solace of a country retreat ; his health was impaired and 
his spirits depressed. Sir Joshua Reynolds, who perceived the 
state of his mind, kindly gave him much of his company. In the 
course of their interchange of thought. Goldsmith suggested to him 
the story of Ugolino, as a subject for his pencil. The painting 
founded on it remains a memento of their friendship. 

On the 4th of August we find them together at Vauxhall, at 
that time a place in high vogue, and which had once been to Grold- 
smith a scene of Oriental splendor and delight. We have, in fact, 
in the Citizen of the World, a picture of it as it had struck him 
in former years and in his happier moods. " Upon entering the 
gardens," says the Chinese philosopher, "I found every sense oc- 
cupied with more than expected pleasure : the lights everywhere 
glimmering through the scarcely moving trees ; the full-bodied con- 
cert bursting on the stillness of the night ; the natural concert of 
the birds in the more retired part of the grove, vying with that 
which was formed by art ; the company gayly dressed, looking sat- 



262 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

isfaction, and the tables spread with various delicacies, — all con- 
spired to fill my imagination with the visionary happiness of the 
Arabian law-giver, and lifted me into an -ecstasy of admira- 
tion."^ 

Everything now, however, is seen with different eyes ; with him 
it is dissipation without pleasure ; and he finds it impossible any 
longer, by mingling in the gay and giddy throng of apparently 
prosperous and happy beings, to escape from the carking care 
which is clinging to his heart. 

His kind friend, Cradock, came up to town towards autumn, 
when all the fashionable world was in the country, to give his wife 
the benefit of a skilful dentist. He took lodgings in Norfolk 
Street, to be in Goldsmith's neighborhood, and passed most of his 
mornings with him. " I found him," he says, " much altered and 
at times very low. He wished me to look over and revise some of 
his works ; but, with a select friend or two, I was more pressing 
that he should publish by subscription his two celebrated poems 
of the Traveller and the Deserted Village, with notes." The idea 
of Cradock was, that the subscription would enable wealthy per- 
sons, favorable to Goldsmith, to contribute to his pecuniary relief 
without wounding his pride. " Goldsmith," said he, " readily gave 
up to me his private copies, and said, ' Pray do what you please 
with them.' But whilst he sat near me, he rather submitted to 
than encouraged my zealous proceedings. 

" I one morning called upon him, however, and found him infi- 
nitely better than I had expected ; and, in a kind of exulting style, 
he exclaimed, ' Here are some of the best of my prose writings ; 
/ have been hard at work ■ since midnight, and I desire you to 
examine them.' 'These,' said I, 'are excellent indeed.' 'They 
are,' replied he, 'intended as an introduction to a body of arts 
and sciences.' " 

Poor Goldsmith was, in fact, gathering together the fragments 
of his shipwreck ; the notes and essays, and memoranda collected 

1 Citizen of the World. Letter LXXI. 



A PARTING SCENE. 263 

for his dictionary, and proposed to found on them a work in 
two volumes, to be entitled A Survey/ of Experimental Phi- 
losophy. 

The plan of the subscription came to nothing, and the projected 
survey never was executed. The head might yet devise, but the 
heart was failing him ; his talent at hoping, which gave him buoy- 
ancy to carry out his enterprises, was almost at an end. 

Cradock's farewell-scene with him is told in a simple but 
touching manner. 

" The day before I was to set out for Leicestershire, I insisted 
upon his dining with us. He replied, ' I will, but on one condi- 
tion, that you will not ask me to eat anything.' ' Nay,' said. I, 
'this answer is absolutely unkind, for I had hoped, as we are sup- 
plied from the Crown and Anchor, that you would have named 
something you might have relished.' 'Well,' was the reply, 'if 
you will but explain it to Mrs, Cradock, I will certainly wait upon 
you.' 

"The Doctor found, as usual, at my apartments, newspapers 
and pamphlets, and with a pen and ink he amused himself as well 
as he could. I had ordered from the tavern some fish, a roasted 
joint of lamb, and a tart ; and the Doctor either sat down or 
walked about just as he pleased. After dinner he took some wine 
with biscuits ; but I was obliged soon to leave him for a while, as 
I had matters to settle prior to my next day's journey. On my 
return, coffee was ready, and the Doctor appeared more cheerful 
(for Mrs. Cradock was always rather a favorite with him), and in 
the evening he endeavored to talk and remark as usual, but all was 
forced. He stayed till midnight, and I insisted on seeing him safe 
home, and we most cordially shook hands at the Temple-gate." 
Cradock little thought that this was to be their final parting. He 
looked back to it with mournful recollections in after-years, and 
lamented that he had not remained longer in town, at every incon- 
venience, to solace the poor broken-spirited poet. 

The latter continued in town all the autumn. At the opening 
of the Opera-House, on the 20th of November, Mrs. Yates, an 



264 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

actress whom he held in great esteem, delivered a poetical exordium 
of his composition. Beauclerc, in a letter to Lord Charlemont, 
pronounced it very good, and predicted that it would soon be in all 
the papers. It does not appear, however, to have been ever pub- 
lished. In his fitful state of mind Goldsmith may have taken no 
care about it, and thus it has been lost to the world, although it 
was received with great applause by a crowded and brilliant 
audience. 

A gleam of sunshine breaks through the gloom that was gather- 
ing over the poet. Towards the end of the year he receives another 
Christmas invitation to Barton. A country Christmas ! — with all 
the cordiality of the fireside circle, and the joyous revelry of the 
oaken hall, — what a contrast to the loneliness of a bachelor's cham- 
bers in the Temple ! It is not to be resisted. But how is poor 
Goldsmith to raise the ways and means ? His purse is empty ; his 
booksellers are already in advance to him. As a last resource, he 
applies to Garrick. Their mutual intimacy at Barton may have 
suggested him as an alternative. The old loan of forty pounds 
has never been paid ; and Newbery's note, pledged as a security, 
has never been taken up. An additional loan of sixty pounds is 
now asked for, thus increasing the loan to one hundred ; to insure 
the payment, he now offers, besides Newbery's note, the transfer 
of the comedy of the Good-natured Man to Drury Lane, with such 
alterations as Garrick may suggest. Garrick, in reply, evades the 
offer of the altered comedy, alludes significantly to a new one which 
Goldsmith had talked of writing for him, and offers to furnish the 
money required on his own acceptance. 

The reply of Goldsmith bespeaks a heart brimful of gratitude 
and overflowing with fond anticipations of Barton and the smiles 
of its fair residents. " My dear friend," writes he, " I thank you. 
I wish I could do something to serve you. I shall have a comedy 
for you in a season, or two at farthest, that I believe will be worth 
your acceptance, for I fancy I will make it a fine thing. You 
shall have the refusal. ... I will draw upon you one month 
a-fter date for sixty pounds, and your acceptance will be ready 



A RETURN TO DRUDGERY. 265 

money, part of which I ivant to go down to Barton with. May 
God preserve my honest little man, for he has my heart. Ever, 

" Oliver Gtoldsmith." 

And having thus scrambled together a little pocket-money, by 
hard contrivance, poor Goldsmith turns his back upon care and 
trouble, and Temple quarters, to forget for a time his desolate 
bachelorhood in the family circle and a Christmas fireside at 
Barton. 



CHAPTER XLIV. 

The Barton festivities are over ; Christmas, with all its home- 
felt revelry of the heart, has passed like a dream ; the Jessamy 
Bride has beamed her last smile upon the poor poet, and the early 
part of 1774 finds him in his now dreary bachelor abode in the 
Temple, toiling fitfully and hopelessly at a multiplicity of tasks. 
His Animated Nature, so long delayed, so often interrupted, is at 
length announced for publication, though it has yet to receive a 
few finishing touches. He is preparing a third History of 
England, to be compressed and condensed in one volume, for the 
use of schools. He is revising his Inquiry into Polite Learning, 
for which he receives the pittance of five guineas, much needed in 
his present scantiness of purse j he is arranging his Survey of 
Experimental Philosophy, and he is translating the Comic Ro- 
mance of Scarron. Such is a part of the various labors of a drudg- 
ing, depressing kind, by which his head is ma'de weary and his 
heart faint. " If there is a mental drudgery," says Sir Walter 
Scott, " which lowers the spirits and lacerates the nerves, like the 
toil of a slave, it is that which is exacted by literary composition, 
when the heart is not in unison with the work upon which the 
head is employed. Add to the unhappy author's task sickness, 
sorrow, or the pressure of unfavorable circumstances, and the 
labor of the bondsman becomes light in comparison." Goldsmith 
again makes an efi'ort to rally his spirits by going into gay society. 



266 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

"Our club," writes Beauclerc to Charlemont, on the 12th of Feb- 
ruary, " has dwindled away to nothing. Sir Joshua and Gold- 
smith have got into such a round of pleasures that they have no 
time." This shows how little Beauclerc was the companion of the 
poet's mind, or could judge of him below the surface. Reynolds, 
the kind participator in joyless dissipation, could have told a dif- 
ferent story of his companion's heart-sick gayety. 

In this forced mood Goldsmith gave entertainments in his 
chambers in the Temple ; the last of which was a dinner to John- 
son, Reynolds, and others of his intimates, who partook with 
sorrow and reluctance of his imprudent hospitality. The first 
course vexed them by its needless profusion. When a second, 
equally extravagant, was served up, Johnson and Reynolds declined 
to partake of it ; the rest of the company, understanding their 
motives, followed their example, and the dishes went from the 
table untasted. Goldsmith felt sensibly this silent and well- 
intended rebuke. 

The gayeties of society, however, cannot medicine for any length 
of time a mind diseased. Wearied by the distractions and harassed 
by the expenses of a town-life, which he had not the discretion to 
regulate. Goldsmith took the resolution, too tardily adoj)ted, of 
retiring to the serene quiet, and cheap and healthful pleasures 
of the country, and of passing only two months of the year in 
London. He accordingly made arrangements to sell his right in 
the Temple chambers, and in the month of March retired to his 
country quarters at Hyde, there to devote himself to toil. At this 
dispirited juncture, when inspiration seemed to be at an end, and 
the poetic fire extinguished, a spark fell on his combustible imagi- 
nation and set it in a blaze. 

He belonged to a temporary association of men of talent, some 
of them members of the Literary Club, who dined together occa- 
sionally at the St. James's Coffee-House. At these dinners, as 
usual, he was one of the last to arrive. On one occasion, when he 
was more dilatory than usual, a whim seized the company to 
write epitaphs on him, as " The late Dr. Goldsmith," and several 



''RETALIATION.'' 267 

were thrown off in a playful vein, hitting off his peculiarities. 
The only one extant was written by Garrick, and has been pre- 
served, very probably, by its pungency : — 

" Here lies poet Goldsmith, for shortness called Noll, 
Who wrote like an angel, but talked like poor poll." 

Goldsmith did not relish the sarcasm, especially as coming from 
such a quarter. He was not very ready at repartee ; but he took 
his time, and in the interval of his various tasks concocted a series 
of epigrammatic sketches, under the title of Retaliation, in which 
the characters of his distinguished intimates were admirably hit 
off, with a mixture of generous praise and good-humored raillery. 
In fact the poem, for its graphic truth, its nice discrimination, its 
terse good sense, and its shrewd knowledge of the world, must 
have electrified the club almost as much as the first appearance of 
The Traveller, and let them still deeper into the character and 
talents of the man they had been accustomed to consider as their 
butt. Retaliation, in a word, closed his accounts with the club, 
and balanced all his previous deficiencies. 

The portrait of David Garrick is one of the most elaborate in 
the poem. When the poet came to touch it off, he had some lurk- 
ing piques to gratify, which the recent attack had revived. He 
may have forgotten David's cavalier treatment of him, in the 
early days of his /.comparative obscurity ; he may have forgiven 
his refusal of JM^feys ; but Garrick had been capricious in his 
conduct in t^^^pUp of their recent intercourse : sometimes treat- 
ing him with gross familiarity, at other times affecting dignity 
and resey^e, and assuming airs of superiority ; frequently he had 
been facetious and witty in company at his expense, and lastly he 
had been guilty of the couplet just quoted. Goldsmith, therefore, 
touched oft* the lights and shadows of his character with a free 
hand, and at the same time gave a side-hit at his old rival, 
Kelly, and his critical persecutor, Kenrick, in making them syco- 
phantic satellites of the actor. Goldsmith, however, was void of 
gall even in his revenge, and his very satire was more humorous 
than caustic : — 



268 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

" Here lies David Garrick, describe him wlio can, 
An abridgment of all that was pleasant in man j 
As an actor, confess' d without rival to shine ; 
As a wit, if not first, in the very first line : 
Yet, with talents like these, and an excellent heart, 
The man had his failings, a dupe to his art. 
Like an ill-judging beauty, his colors he spread, 
And beplaster'd with rouge his own natural red. 
On the stage he was natural, simple, affecting ; 
'Twas only that when he was off he was acting. 
With no reason on earth to go out of his way, 
He turn'd and he varied full ten times a day : 
Though secure of our hearts, yet confoundedly sick 
If they were not his own by finessing and trick : 
He cast off his friends as a huntsman his pack, 
For he knew, when he pleased, he could whistle them back. 
Of praise a mere glutton, he swallow 'd what came, 
And the puff of a dunce he mistook it for fame ; 
Till his relish, grown callous almost to disease. 
Who pepper'd the highest was surest to please. 
But let us be candid, and speak out our mind, 
If dunces applauded, he paid them in kind. 
Ye Kenricks, ye Kellys, and Woodfalls so grave, 
What a commerce was yours, while you got and you gave ! 
How did Grub Street reecho the shouts that you raised 
While he was be-Eosciused and you were be-praised ! 
But peace to his spirit, wherever it flies. 
To act as an angel and mix with the skies : 
Those poets who owe their best fame to his skill. 
Shall still be his flatterers, go where he will ; 
Old Shakspeare receive him with praise and with love, 
And Beaumonts and Bens be his Kellys above.^' 

This portion of Retaliation soon brought a retort from Garrick, 
which we insert, as giving something of a likeness of Goldsmith, 
though in broad caricature : — 

" Here, Hermes, says Jove, who with nectar was mellow, 
Go fetch me some clay — I will make an odd fellow : 
Right and wrong shall be jumbled, much gold and some dross. 
Without cause be he pleased, without cause be he cross ; 



GOLDSMITH NO BAKE. 269 

Be sure, as I work, to throw in contradictions, 

A great love of truth, yet a mind turn'd to fictions ; 

Now mix tliese ingredients, which, warm'd in the baking, 

Turn'd to learning and gaming, religion and raking. 

Witli tlie love of a wench let liis writings toe chaste ; 

Tip his tongue witli strange matter, his lips with fine taste : 

That the rake and the poet o'er all may prevail, 

Set fire to the head and set fire to the tail ; 

Eor the joy of each sex on the world I'll toestow it, 

This scholar, rake. Christian, dupe, gamester, and poet. 

Tliough a mixture so odd, he shall merit great fame. 

And among brother mortals be Goldsmith liis name ; 

When on earth this strange meteor no more shall appear. 

You, Hermes., shall fetch him, to make us sport here." 

The charge of raking, so repeatedly advanced in the foregoing 
lines, must be considered a sportive one, founded, perhaps, on an 
incident or two within Garrick's knowledge, but not borne out by 
the course of Goldsmith's life. He seems to have had a tender 
sentiment for the sex, but perfectly free from libertinism. Neither 
was he an habitual gamester. The strictest scrutiny has detected 
no settled vice of the kind. He was fond of a game of cards, but 
an nnskilfid and careless player. Cards in those days were uni- 
versally introduced into society. High play was, in fact, a fashion- 
able amusement, as at one time was deep drinking ; and a man might 
occasionally lose large sums, and be beguiled into deep potations, 
without incurring the character of a gamester or a drunkard. 
Poor Goldsmith, on his advent into high society, assumed fine 
notions with fine clothes ; he was thrown occasionally among high 
players, men of fortune who could sport their cool hundred as care- 
lessly as his early comrades at BallymaJion could their half-crowns. 
Being at all times magnificent in money -matters, he may have played 
with them in their own way, without considering that what was 
sport to them to him was ruin. Indeed, part of his financial em- 
barrassments may have arisen from losses of the kind, incurred 
inadvertently, not in the indulgence of a habit. " I do not believe 
Goldsmith to have deserved the name of gamester," said one of his 
contemporaries ; "he liked cards very well, as other people do, and 



270 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

lost and won occasionally, but as far as I saw or heard, and I had 
many opportunities of hearing, never any considerable sum. If he 
gamed with any one, it was probably with Beauclerc, but I do not 
know that such was the case." 

Retaliation, as we have already observed, was thrown off in 
parts, at intervals, and was never completed. Some characters, 
originally intended to be introduced, remained unattempted ; others 
were but partially sketched — such as the one of Reynolds, the 
friend of his heart, and which he commenced with a felicity which 
makes us regret that it should remain unfinished. 

" Here Keynolds is laid, and to tell you my mind, 
He has not left a wiser or better behind. 
His pencil was striking, resistless, and grand ; 
His manners were gentle, complying, and bland ; 
Still born to improve us in every part. 
His pencil our faces, his manners our heart. 
To coxcombs averse, yet most civilly steering, 
When they judged without skill he was still hard of hearing : 
When they talked of their Raphaels, Correggios, and stuff. 
He shifted his trumpet and only took snuff. 
By flattery unspoiled " 

The friendly portrait stood unfinished on the easel ; the hand of 
the artist had failed ! An access of a local complaint, under w^hich 
he had suffered for some time past, added to a general prostration 
of health, brought Goldsmith back to town before- he had well 
settled himself in the country. The local complaint subsided, but 
was followed by a low nervous fever. He was not aware of his 
critical situation, and intended to be at the club on the 25th of 
March, on which occasion Charles' Fox, Sir Charles Bunbury (one 
of the Horneck connection), and two other new members were 
to be present. In the afternoon, however, he felt so unwell as to 
take to his bed, and his symptoms soon acquired sufficient force to 
keep him there. His malady fluctuated for several days, and hopes 
were entertained of his recovery, but they proved fallacious. He 
had skilful medical aid and faithful nursing, but he would not 
follow the advice of his physicians, and persisted in the use of 



DEATH. 271 

James's powders, which he had once found beneficial, but which 
were now injurious to him. His appetite was gone, his strength 
failed him, but his mind remained clear, and was perhaps too active 
for his frame. Anxieties and disappointments which had pre- 
viously sapped his constitution, doubtless aggravated his present 
complaint and rendered him sleepless. In reply to an inquiry of 
his physician, he acknowledged that his mind was ill at ease. This 
was his last reply : he was too weak to talk, and in general took 
no notice of what was said to him. He sank at last into a deep 
sleep, and it was hoped a favorable crisis had arrived. He awoke, 
however, in strong convulsions, which continued without intermis- 
sion until he expired, on the 4th of April, at five o'clock in the 
morning ; being in the forty-sixth year of his age. 

His death was a shock to the literary world, and a deep afflic- 
tion to a wide circle of intimates and friends ; for, with all his 
foibles and peculiarities, he was fully as much beloved as he was 
admired. Burke, on hearing the news, burst into tears. Sir 
Joshua Reynolds threw by his pencil for the day, and grieved more 
than he had done in times of great family distress. " I was 
abroad at the time of his death," writes Dr. M'Donnell, the youth 
whom when in distress he had employed as an amanuensis, " and 
I wept bitterly when the intelligence first reached me. A blank 
came over my heart as if I had lost one of my nearest relatives, and 
was followed for some days by a feeling of despondency." John- 
son felt the blow deeply and gloomily. In writing some time 
afterwards to Bos well, he observed, " Of poor Dr. Goldsmith there 
is little to be told more than the papers have made public. He 
died of a fever,' made, I am afraid, more violent by uneasi- 
ness of mind. His debts began to be heavy, and all his resources 
were exhausted. Sir Joshua is of opinion that he owed no less 
than two thousand pounds. Was ever poet so trusted before 1 " 

Among his debts were seventy-nine pounds due to his tailor, Mr. 
William Filby, from whom he had received a new suit but a few days 
before his death. "My father," said the younger Filby, "though 
a loser to that amount, attributed no blame to Goldsmith ; he had 



272 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

been a good customer, and, had he lived, would have paid every 
farthing." Others of his tradespeople evinced the same confidence 
in his integrity, notwithstanding his heedlessness. Two sister mil- 
liners in Temple Lane, who had been accustomed to deal with him, 
were concerned when told, some time before his death, of his pecu- 
niary embarrassments. " Oh, sir," said they to Mr. Cradock, 
" sooner persuade him to let us work for him gratis than apply 
to any other ; we are sure he will pay us when he can." 

On the stairs of his apartment there was the lamentation of the 
old and infirm, and the sobbing of women ; poor objects of his 
charity, to whom he had never turned a deaf ear, even when 
struggling himself with poverty. 

But there was one mourner whose enthusiasm for his memory, 
could it have been foreseen, might have soothed the bitterness of 
death. After the coffin had been screwed down, a lock of his hair 
was requested for a lady, a particular friend, who wished to 
preserve it as a remembrance. It was the beautiful Mary 
Horneck — the Jessamy Bride. The coffin was opened again, 
and a lock of hair cut off" ; which she treasured to her dying day. 
Poor Groldsmith ! could he have foreseen that such a memorial of 
him was to be thus cherished ! 

One word more concerning this lady, to whom we have so often 
ventured to advert. She survived almost to the present day. 
Hazlitt met her at Northcote's painting-room, about twenty years 
since, as Mrs. Gwyn, the widow of a General Gwyn of the army. 
She was at that time upwards of seventy years of age. Still, he 
said, she was beautiful, beautiful ^even in years. After she was 
gone, Hazlitt remarked how handsome she still was. " I do not 
know," said Northcote, " why she is so kind as to come to see me, 
except that I am the last link in the chain that connects her with 
all those she most esteemed when young — Johnson, Reynolds, 
Goldsmith — and remind her of the most delightful period of her 
life." " Not only so," observed Hazlitt, "but you remember what 
she was at twenty ; and you thus bring back to her the triumphs 
of her youth — ^that pride of beauty, which must be the more 



THE FUNERAL. 273 

fondly cherished as it has no external vouchers, and lives chiefly 
in the bosom of its once lovely possessor. In her, however, the 
Graces had triumphed over time ; she was one of Ninon de 
I'Enclos's people, of the last of the immortals. I could almost 
fancy the shade of Goldsmith in the room, looking round with 
complacency." 

The Jessamy Bride survived her sister upwards of forty years, 
and died in 1840, within a few days of completing her eighty- 
eighth year. " She had gone through all the stages of life," says 
Northcote, " and had lent a grace to each." However gayly she 
may have sported with the half-concealed admiration of the poor 
awkward poet in the heyday of her youth and beauty, and how- 
ever much it may have been made a subject of teasing by her 
youthful companions, she evidently prided herself in after-years 
upon having been an object of his affectionate regard ; it certainly 
rendered her interesting throughout life in the eyes of his admirers, 
and has hung a poetical wreath above her grave. 



CHAPTER XLY. 

In the warm feeling of the moment, while the remains of the 
poet were scarce cold, it was determined by his friends to honor 
them by a public funeral and a tomb in Westminster Abbey. His 
very pall-bearers were designated : Lord Shelburne, Lord Lowth, 
Sir Joshua Reynolds ; the Hon. Mr. Beauclerc, Mr. Burke, and 
David Garrick. This feeling cooled down, however, when it was 
discovered that he died in debt, and had not left wherewithal to 
pay for such expensive obsequies. Five days after his death, 
therefore, at five o'clock of Saturday evening, the 9th of April, he 
was privately interred in the burying-ground of the Temple 
Church ; a few persons attending as mourners, among whom we 
do not find specified any of his peculiar and distinguished friends. 
The chief moiurner was Sir Joshua Reynolds's nephew. Palmer, 
afterwards Dean of Cashel. One person, however, from whom it 



274 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

was but little to be expected, attended the funeral and evinced 
real sorrow on the occasion. This was Hugh Kelly, once the 
dramatic rival of the deceased, and often, it is said, his anony- 
mous assailant in the newspapers. If he had really been guilty 
of this basest of literary offences, he was punished by the stings 
of remorse, for we are told that he shed bitter tears over the 
grave of the man he had injured. His tardy atonement only 
provoked the lash of some unknown satirist, as the following lines 
will show : — 

" Hence Kelly, who years, without honor or shame, 
Had been sticking his bodkin in Oliver's fame, 
Who thought, like the Tartar, by this to inherit 
His genius, his learning, simplicity, spirit ; 
Now sets every feature to weep o'er his fate, 
And acts as a mom*ner to blubber in state." 

One base wretch deserves to be mentioned, the reptile Kenrick, 
who, after having repeatedly slandered Goldsmith, while living, 
had the audacity to insult his memory when dead. The following 
distich is sufficient to show his malignancy, and to hold him up 
to execration : — 

"By his own art, who justly died, 
A blund'ring, artless suicide : 
Share, earthworms, share, since now he's dead. 
His megrim, maggot-bitten head." 

This scurrilous epitaph produced a burst of public indignation, 
that awed for a time even the infamous Kenrick into silence. On 
the other hand, the press teemed with tributes in verse and prose 
to the memory of the deceased; all evincing the mingled feeling 
of admiration for the author and affection for the man. 

Not long after his death the Literary Club set on foot a sub- 
scription, and raised a fund to erect a monument to his memory, 
in Westminster Abbey. It was executed by Nollekens, and con- 
sisted simply of a bust of the poet in profile, in high relief, in a 
medallion, and was placed in the area of a pointed arch, over the 
south door in Poets' Comer, between the monuments of Gay and 



EPITAPH, 275 

the Duke of Argyle. Johnson furnished a Latin epitaph, which 
was read at the table of Sir Joshua Reynolds, where several 
members of the club and other friends of the deceased were 
present. Though considered by them a masterly composition, 
they thought the literary character of the poet not defined with 
sufficient exactness, and they preferred that the epitaph should be 
in English rather than Latin, as "the memory of so eminent 
an English writer ought to be perpetuated in the language to 
which his works were likely to be so lasting an ornament." 

These objections were reduced to writing, to be respectfully 
submitted to Johnson, but such was the awe entertained of his 
frown, that every one shrank from putting his name first to the 
instrument ; whereupon their names were written about it in a 
circle, making what mutinous sailors call a Round Robin. John- 
son received it half graciously, half grimly, " He was willing," 
he said, " to modify the sense of the epitaph in any manner the 
gentlemen pleased ; hut he never ivould consent to disgrace the 
walls of Westminster Abbey with an English inscription.^^ See- 
ing the names of Dr. Warton and Edmund Burke among the 
signers, " he wondered," he said, " that Joe Warton, a scholar by 
profession, should be such a fool ; and should have thought that 
Mund Burke would have had more sense." The following is the 
epitaph as it stands inscribed on a white marble tablet beneath the 
bust : — 

"OLIVARII GOLDSMITH,! 

Poetse, Physiol, Historici, 
Qui nullum f er6 scribendi genus 

Non tetigit, 
Nullum quod tetigit non ornavit : 
Sive risus essent movendi, 
Sive lacrymse, 
Affectuum potens at lenis dominator : 
Ingenio sublimis, vividus, versatilis, 
Oratione grandis, nitidus, venustus : 

1 The following translation is from Croker's edition of Boswell's 
Johnson : — 



276 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

Hoc monumento memoriam coluit 

Sodalium amor, 

Amicorum fides, 

Lectorum veneratio. 

Natus in Hibernia Fornise Longfordiensis, 

In loco cui nomen Pallas, 

Nov. XXIX. MDCCxxxi. ; i 

Eblanse Uteris institutus ; 

Obiit Londini, 
April IV. MDCCLxxiv." 

We shall not pretend to follow these anecdotes of the life of 
Goldsmith with any critical dissertation on his writings ; their 
merits have long since been fully discussed, and their station in 
the scale of literary merit permanently established. They have 
outlasted generations of works of higher power and wider scope, 
and will continue to outlast succeeding generations, for they have 
that magic charm of style by which works are embalmed to 
perpetuity. Neither shall we attempt a regular analysis of the 

"OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH - 

A Poet, Naturalist, and Historian, 
Who left scarcely any style of writing 
Untouched, 
And touched nothing thac he did not adorn ; 
Of all the passions. 
Whether smiles were to be moved 
Or tears, 
A powerful yet gentle master ; 
In genius, sublime, vivid, versatile. 
In style, elevated, clear, elegant — 
The love of companions, 
The fidelity of friends. 
And the veneration of" readers. 
Have by this monument honored the memory. 
He was born in Ireland, 
At a place called Pallas, 
[In the parish] of Forney, [and county] of Longford, 
On the 29th Nov., 1731. 
Educated at [the University of] Dublin, 
And died in London, 
4th April, 1774. 

1 Not correct. The true date of birth was 10th November, 1728, as given . 
on page 10. 



CONCLUDING BEMARKS. 277 

character of the poet, but will indulge in a few desultory remarks, 
in addition to those scattered throughout the preceding chapters. 

Never was the trite, because sage apophthegm, that " the child 
is father to the man," more fully verified than in the case of 
Goldsmith. He is shy, awkward, and blundering in childhood, 
yet full of sensibility; he is a butt for the jeers and jokes of his 
companions, but apt to surprise and confound them by sudden and 
witty repartees ; he is dull and stupid at his tasks, yet an eager 
and intelligent devourer of the travelling tales and campaigning 
stories of his half-military pedagogue ; he may be a dunce, but he 
is already a rhymer ; and his early scintillations of poetry awaken 
the expectations of his friends. He seems from infancy to have 
been compounded of two natures, one bright, the other blundering; 
or to have had fairy gifts laid in his cradle by the "good people " 
who haunted his birthplace, the old goblin mansion on the banks 
of the Inny. 

He carries with him the wayward elfin spirit, if we may so term 
it, throughout his career. His fairy gifts are of no avail at 
school, academy, or college : they unfit him for close study and 
practical science, and render him heedless of everything that does 
not address itself to his poetical imagination and genial and festive 
feelings ; they dispose him to break away from restraint, to stroll 
about hedges, green lanes, and. haunted streams, to revel with 
jovial companions, or to rove the country like a gypsy in quest 
of odd adventures. 

As if confiding in these delusive gifts, he takes no heed of the 
present nor care for the future, lays no regular and solid foundation 
of knowledge, follows out no plan, adopts and discards those recom- 
mended by his friends, at one time prepares for the ministry, next 
turns to the law, and then fixes upon medicine. He repairs to 
Edinburgh, the great emporium of medical science, but the fairy 
gifts accompany him; he idles and frolics away his time there, 
imbibing only such knowledge as is agreeable to him ; makes an 
excursion to the poetical regions of the Highlands ; and having 
walked the hospitals for the customary time, sets off to ramble 



278 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

over the Continent, in quest of novelty rather than knowledge. 
His whole tour is a poetical one. He fancies he is playing the 
philosopher while he is really playing the poet ; and though 
professedly he attends lectures and visits foreign universities, so 
deficient is he on his return, in the studies for which he set 
out, that he fails in an examination as a surgeon's mate ; and 
while figuring as a doctor of medicine, is outvied on a point of 
practice by his apothecary. Baffled in every regular pursuit, 
after trying in vain some of the humbler callings of common- 
place life, he is driven almost by chance to the exercise of his pen, 
and here the fairy gifts come to his assistance. For a long time, 
however, he seems unaware of the magic properties of that pen : 
he uses it only as a makeshift until he can find a legitimate means 
of support. He is not a learned man, and can write but meagrely 
and at second-hand on learned subjects ; but he has a quick 
convertible talent that seizes lightly on the points of knowledge 
necessary to the illustration of a theme : his writings for a time 
are desultory, the fruits of what he has seen and felt, or what he 
has recently and hastily read ; but his gifted pen transmutes 
everything into gold, and his own genial nature reflects its sun- 
shine through his pages. 

Still unaware of his powers he throws off" his writings anony- 
mously, to go with the writings of less favored men ; and it is a 
long time, and after a bitter struggle with poverty and humiliation, 
before he acquires confidence in his literary talent as a means of 
support, and begins to dream of reputation. 

From this time his pen is a wand of power in his hand, and he 
has only to use it discreetly, to make it competent to all his wants. 
But discretion is not a part of Goldsmith's nature ; and it seems 
the property of these fairy gifts to be accompanied by moods and 
temperaments to render their effect precarious. The heedlessness 
of his early days ; his disposition for social enjoyment ; his habit 
of throwing the present on the neck of the future, still continue. 
His expenses forerun his means ; he incurs debts on the faith of 
what his magic pen is to produce, and then, under the pressure of 



CONCLUDING REMABKS. 279 

his debts, sacrifices its productions for prices far below their value. 
It is a redeeming circumstance in his prodigality that it is lavished 
oftener upon others than upon himself: he gives without thought 
or stint, and is the continual dupe of his benevolence and his trust- 
fulness in human nature. We may say of him as he says of one 
of his heroes, " He could not stifle the natural impulse which he 
had to do good, but frequently borrowed money to relieve the dis- 
tressed ; and when he knew not conveniently where to borrow, he 
has been observed to shed tears as he passed through the wretched 
suppliants who attended his gate." . . 

" His simplicity in trusting persons whom he had no previous 
reasons to place confidence in, seems to be one of those lights of his 
character which, while they impeach his understanding, do honor to 
his benevolence. The low and the timid are ever suspicious ; but 
a heart impressed with honorable sentiments, expects from others 
sympathetic sincerity." -^ 

His heedlessness in pecuniary matters, which had rendered his 
life a struggle with poverty even in the days of his obscurity, ren- 
dered the struggle still more intense when his fairy gifts had 
elevated him into the society of the wealthy and luxurious, and 
imposed on his simple and generous spirit fancied obligations to a 
more ample and bounteous display. 

"How comes it," says a recent and ingenious critic, "that in 
all the miry paths of life which he had trod, no speck ever sullied 
the robe of his modest and graceful Muse ? How amidst all the 
love of inferior company, which never to the last forsook him, did 
he keep his genius so free from every touch of vulgarity ? " 

We answer that it was owing to the innate purity and goodness 
of his nature ; there was nothing in it that assimilated to vice and 
vulgarity. Though his circumstances often compelled him to asso- 
ciate with the poor, they never could betray him into companion- 
ship with the depraved. His relish for humor and for the study 
of character, as we have before observed, brought him often into 
convivial company of a vulgar kind ; but he discriminated between 

1 Goldsmith's Life of Nash. 



280 OLIVEB GOLDSMITH. 

their vulgarity and their amusing qualities, or rather wrought from 
the whole those familiar pictures of life which form the staple of 
his most popular writings. 

Much, too, of this intact purity of heart may be ascribed to the 
lessons of his infancy under the paternal roof ; to the gentle, benev- 
olent, elevated, unworldly maxims of his father, who " passing 
rich with forty pounds a year," infused a spirit into his child which 
riches could not deprave nor poverty degrade. Much of his boy- 
hood, too, had been passed in the household of his uncle, the 
amiable and generous Contarine ; where he talked of literature 
with the good pastor, and practised music with his daughter, and 
delighted them both by his juvenile attempts at poetry. These 
early associations breathed a grace and refinement into his mind 
and tuned it up, after the rough sports on the green, or the frolics 
at the tavern. These led him to turn from the roaring glees of 
the club, to listen to the harp of his cousin Jane ; and from the 
rustic triumph of "throwing sledge," to a stroll with his fl.ute 
along the pastoral banks of the Inny. 

The gentle spirit of his father walked with him through life, a 
pure and virtuous monitor ; and in all the vicissitudes of his career 
we find him ever more chastened in mind by the sweet and holy 
recollections of the home of his infancy. 

It has been questioned whether he really had any religious feel- 
ing. Those who raise the question have never considered well his 
writings ; his Vicar of Wakefield, and his pictures of the Village 
Pastor, present religion under its most endearing forms, and with 
a feeling that could only flow from the deep convictions of the heart. 
When his foir travelling companions at Paris urged him to read the 
Church Service on a Sunday, he replied that " he was not worthy 
to do it." He had seen in early life the sacred offices performed by 
his father and his brother with a solemnity which had sanctified 
them in his memory ; how could he presume to undertake such 
functions ? His religion has been called in question by Johnson 
and by Boswell : he certainly had not the gloomy hypochondriacal 
piety of the one, nor the babbling mouth-piety of the other ^ but 



CONCLUDING BEMARKS. 281 

the spirit of Christian charity, breathed forth in his writings and 
illustrated in his conduct, give us reason to believe he had the 
indwelling religion of the soul. 

We have made sufficient comments in the preceding chapters on 
his conduct in elevated circles of literature and fashion. The fairy 
gifts which took him there were not accompanied by the gifts and 
graces necessary to sustain him in that artificial sphere. He can 
neither play the learned sage with Johnson, nor the fine gentleman 
with Beauclerc ; though he has a mind replete with wisdom and 
natural shrewdness, and a spirit free from vulgarity. The blunders 
of a fertile but hurried intellect, and the awkward display of the 
student assuming the man of fashion, fix on him a character for 
absurdity and vanity which, like the charge of lunacy, it is hard 
to disprove, however weak the grounds of the charge and strong 
the facts in opposition to it. 

In truth, he is never truly in his place in these learned and 
fashionable circles, which talk and live for display. It is not the 
kind of society he craves. His heart yearns for domestic life ; it 
craves familiar, confiding intercourse, family firesides, the guileless 
and happy company of children ; these bring out the heartiest and 
sweetest sympathies of his nature. 

"Had it been his fate," says the critic we have already quoted, 
" to meet a woman who could have loved him, despite his faults, 
and respected him despite his foibles, we cannot but think that 
his life and his genius would have been much more harmonious ; 
his desultory affections would have been concentred, his craving 
self-love appeased, his pursuits more settled, his character more 
solid. A nature like Goldsmith's, so affectionate, so confiding — 
so susceptible to simple, innocent enjoyments — so dependent on 
others for the sunshine of existence, does not flower if deprived 
of the atmosphere of home." 

The cravings of his heart in this respect are evident, we* think, 
throughout his career ; and if we have dwelt with more significancy 
than others upon his intercourse with the beautiful Horneck 
family, it is because we fancied we could detect, amid his playful 



282 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

attentions to one of its members, a lurking sentiment of tenderness, 
kept down by conscious poverty and a humiliating idea of personal 
defects. A hopeless feeling of this kind — the last a man would 
communicate to his friends — might account for much of that fit- 
fulness of conduct, and that gathering melancholy, remarked, but 
not comprehended by his associates, during the last year or two 
of his life ; and may have been one of the troubles of the mind 
which 'aggravated his last illness, and only terminated with his 
death. 

We shall conclude these desultory remarks with a few which 
have been used by us on a former occasion. From the general 
tone of Goldsmith's biography, it is evident that his faults, at the 
worst, were but negative, while his merits were great and decided. 
He was no one's enemy but his own ; his errors, in the main, 
inflicted evil on none but himself, and were so blended with 
humorous and even affecting circumstances, as to disarm anger and 
conciliate kindness. Where eminent talent is united to spotless 
virtue, we are awed and dazzled into admiration, but our admira- 
tion is apt to be cold and reverential ; while there is something in 
the harmless infirmities of a good and great, but erring individual, 
that pleads touchingly to our nature ; and we turn more kindly 
towards the object of our idolatry, when we find that, like ourselves, 
he is mortal and is frail. The epithet so often heard, and in such 
kindly tones, of " poor Goldsmith," speaks volumes. Few, who 
consider the real compound of admirable and whimsical qualities 
which form his character, would wish to prune away his eccentrici- 
ties, trim its grotesque luxuriance, ^nd clip it down to the decent 
formalities of rigid virtue. "Let not his frailties be remembered," 
said Johnson ; " he was a very great man." But, for our part, 
we rather say, " Let them be remembered," since their tendency is 
to endear ; and we question whether he himself would not feel 
gratified in hearing his reader, after dwelling with admiration on 
the proofs of his greatness, close the volume with the kind-hearted 
phrase, so fondly and familiarly ejaculated, of " Poor Goldsmith." 



A WORD ABOUT THE ^'LIFE OF GOLDSMITH." 



In 1818 Sydney Smith said in the Edinburgh Review : " Lit- 
erature the Americans have none — no native literature, we mean. 
It is all imported. They had a Franklin, indeed, and may afford 
to live half a centm-y upon his fame. There is, or was, a Mr. 
Dwight, who wrote some poems, and his baptismal name was 
Timothy. There is also a small account of Virginia by Jefferson, 
and an epic poem by Mr. Joel Barlow, and some pieces of pleas- 
antry by Mr. Irving. But why should Americans write books 
when a six months' passage brings them in their own tongue, our 
sense, science, and genius, by bales and hogsheads? Prairies, 
steamboats, gristmills, are their natural objects for centuries to 
come." The ink was scarcely dry on this sarcastic sally, when the 
Sketch-Boole was published. What would the "prophet bishop" 
have said could he have looked forward to the year 1849, when 
Irving was to write a life of the English Goldsmith that was to 
surpass in appreciativeness anything that his own countrymen 
had said of him ? 

Irving, when asked if he had introduced into his work any 
anecdotes not in Prior's or Forster's Life of Goldsmith, answered 
jokingly : " No, I could not invent any new ones ; but I have 
altered the setting, and have introduced Madame D'Arblay's anec- 
dote of Boswell and Johnson. I have also made more of the 
Jessamy Bride, by adverting to the dates in the tailor's bills, 
and fixing thereby the dates of certain visits to her." It is true 
that Irving, even before these other biographies were published, 
had sketched a Life of Goldsmith to preface a Paris edition of 

283 



284 A WORD ABOUT THE ''LIFE OF GOLDSMITH^ 

that author's works. Later that was expanded, with additions 
from Forster, into the present form. Upon its publication one 
critic remarked, " You may have read the story a hundred times, 
but you will read it again as a new thing in this Biography 
of Irving." Irving calls this book " work done in an off-hand 
manner," — which perhaps accounts for its charm, — and its incep- 
tion seems to have been a sudden "literary freak" of the writer. 
His publisher, Mr. Putnam, tells us the following story of its 
origin : " Sitting at my desk one day, Irving was looking at 
Forster's clever work, which I proposed to reprint. He remarked 
that it was a favorite theme of his, and he had half a mind to 
pursue it, and extend into a volume a sketch he had once made for 
an edition of Goldsmith's works. I expressed a hope that he would 
do so, and within sixty days the first sheets of Irving's Goldsmith 
were in the printer's hands. The press, as he says, was ' dog- 
ging at his heels,' and in two or three weeks the volume was 
published." 

The following extracts from current criticisms of the work show 
the appreciation and enthusiasm with which it was received. The 
first appeared in the New York Tribune, the second in the Christian 
Review of 1850 over the name of Professor Greene : — 

" Everything combines to make this one of the most fascinating 
pieces of biography in the English language. . . . Mr. Irving 
was in possession of abundant materials to do justice to the sub- 
ject. He had only to insert his exquisite magnetic needle into the 
mass to give a choice and shapely form to all that was valuable 
in the labors of previous biographers. . . . Henceforth the two 
names of Irving and Goldsmith will be united in the recollection 
of the delightful hours which each has given to such a host of 
' happy human beings.' " 

" If there is anybody of whom it could be said that it was his 
duty to write a life of Goldsmith, it is Irving; and, often as we 
have had to thank him for happy hours, we do not think that we 
ever felt so grateful to him for anything as for this. We have 
always loved Goldsmith, his poetry and his prose, and everything 



A WORD ABOUT THE ''LIFE OF GOLDSMITH.'' 285 

about him . . ., and yet we must say frankly, that we never under- 
stood Goldsmith's character until now. We have been vexed at 
his w^eakness, and have blushed at his blunders. AVe had always 
wished that he could have thrown off his brogue, and had never 
put on his bloom-colored coat. . . . Thanks to Mr. Irving, our 
doubts have all been solved, and we can love the kind, sim2:)le- 
hearted, genial man with as much confidence as we admire his 
writings. . . . Mr. Irving is just the man to see how weak Gold- 
smith is in many things, how wise in others, and he sees clearly 
how closely his wisdom and his weakness are allied. . . . He tells 
you the story of his hero's errors as freely as he does that of his 
virtues, and in a w^ay to make you feel, as he does, that a man may 
have many a human weakness lie heavy at his door, and yet be 
worthy of our love and admiration still. . . . He understands his 
hero's character thoroughly, and feels that if he can only make 
you understand it, joii will love him as much as he does. There- 
fore he draws him just as he is, lights and shadows, virtues and 
foibles — vices joii cannot call them, be you never so unkind. At 
his blunders he laughs, just as Goldsmith himself used to laugh in 
recounting them ; and he feels the secret of his virtues too justly to 
attempt to gild them over with useless embellishment." 



NOTES. 



References are to pages. 



Preface. Page 1. several years since : in 1824 Irving prepared 
a sketch of Goldsmith's life for a series of English Classics. In 1840 
this sketch was revised for an American edition of Goldsmith's works. 

2. Tu se' lo mio maestro, etc. : "Thou art my master, and my 
author thou ; thou art alone the one from whom I took the beautiful 
style that has done honor to me" (Dante's Inferno^ Longfellow's 
translation). This acknowledgment is enough to make the reader 
eager to find similarities in the styles of Irving and Goldsmith. On 
account of this dedication, Irving has been called "a self -acknowl- 
edged imitator" of Goldsmith. He said himself, however, that he was 
' ' never conscious of attempting to write after any model. No man of 
genius ever did." 

Chapter I. 9. such personal kindness : to arouse such a feeling 
for Goldsmith is Irving's purpose in his biography ; it may be said to 
be the only true object of any good biography. make us love the 
man at the same time that we admire the author : at the end of 
this biography the pupil may decide whether this conclusion is not as 
true of Irving's style as of Goldsmith's. transcripts of his own 

heart and picturings of his fortunes : what else is ever the source of 
any good literature ? What else is personality in literature ? Do not 
these two opening paragraphs already attract the reader to the subject 
of Irving's sketch ? 

10. Ireland : the family of Goldsmith was originally English, how- 
ever. And passing rich, etc. : quoted from The Deserted Village. 
an old, half-rustic mansion : is there anything in this paragraph sug- 
gestive of any of Irving's stories with which you are already familiar? 

11. Lissoy : " If I go to the opera, I sit and sigh for Lissoy's tire- 
side and Johnny Armstrong'' s Last Good-night from Peggy Golden'''' 
(Goldsmith). Man in Black: an autobiographical sketch in the 
Citizen of the World. The quoted paragraphs are from the Citizen of 
the World., Letter xxvii. 

286 



NOTES. 287 

12. the human face divine : Paradise Lost, Book iii, line 34. 

13. motherly dames: the keepers of the "dame's "schools" of 
olden times. hornbook : a written parchment, covered with a 
transparent layer of horn and framed in wood. a common case : 
true of Scott, Tennyson, Burke, Coleridge, — in short, of most great 
imaginative writers. One biography of Goldsmith calls him, in these 
early days, "a stupid, heavy blockhead, little better than a fool." 
Compare that summary with Irving's more sympathetic one. 

14. For, e'en though vanquished, he could argue still : with equal 
obstinacy did Goldsmith, at meetings of the London Club, try to argue 
Dr. Johnson into believing that he moved his upper jaw when he 
talked. travellers' tales : do the words suggest any passion of Irv- 
ing's nature ? Any work of his ? rapparees : Irish armed plun- 
derers ; thence, vagabonds. 

15. scribbling verses : can you name any other poets who had the 
same habit ? sibylline leaves : books professed to be written by 
the sibyls and consulted by the Romans for advice upon public affairs. 
The meaning here is, pages prophetic of Goldsmith's talent. to 
poverty and the Muse : 

" For a man should live in a garret aloof. 
And have few friends, and go poorly clad, 
With an old hat stopping the chink in the roof, 
To keep the goddess constant and glad. ' ' — Aldrich. 

16. .ffisop : the writer of the Fables ; often portrayed in old 
books as deformed and ugly. Bishop Berkeley : 1685-1753 ; 
famous in the eighteenth century as the philosopher who advanced the 
proposition that " nothing is, but only seems to be." 

17. Shakspeare : the supposed cause of Shakespeare's leaving 
Stratford for London was his fear of being prosecuted for stealing 
deer from a certain Sir Thomas Lucy. 

18. at ease in his inn : 

" Let the world wagge, and take mine ease in myne Inne." — Heywood. 

" Shall I not take mine ease in mine inn ? " 

— King Henry IV, Act iii, Scene 3. 

Chapter II. 20. 1745 : Dobson, Prior, and Eorster give the date 
as 1744. pensioner : there were five orders of students in the 

English universities, — noblemen, noblemen's sons, fellow-commoners, 
pensioners, who paid for their board out of their own incomes, and 



288 NOTES, 

sizers (who worked their way by doing menial tasks). He was 

lodged : the "window-frame of his room is still preserved in the library 
of Trinity College. 

22. A lad, etc. : quoted from An Inquiry into the State of Polite 
Learning in Europe. 

23. a knack at hoping : the last straw at which he clutched 
throughout his life. would stroll : it is not always easy to separate 
Goldsmith's vanity and pride. Did the incident told of his father in 
the beginning of the chapter indicate that Oliver would inherit f)ride 
or vanity ? Edmund Burke : 1729-1797. Probably these two men 
of genius did not know each other in college. catch-pole : or 
catchpoll ; the sheriff's officer. 

24. corporal punishment : one of the privileges of masters in those 
days. A similar flogging is reported in the university life of Milton, 
at Cambridge. 

25. America : the wording of the sentence implies the contempt 
in which the States were held in those days. 

26. O. S. : Old Style. In 1752 the old calendar was discarded in 
England for the new Gregorian Calendar. Betw^een the two there was 
a difference of twelve days. 

27. very good-natured and had no harm in me : a perfect epit- 
ome of Goldsmith's character. 

28. To be obliged, etc. : Hawthorne's reason for not entering the 
ministry was equally whimsical, if more serious. He said, "I will not 
be a minister to live upon the sins of mankind." touching instance : 
the pathos of such lines as these lies in the fact that one who could 
appreciate such simple delights led a life barren of them. 

29. that administered to the imagination : does this apply equally 
well to Irving's writings ? 

30. Tony Lumpkin, etc. : characters in She Stoops to Conquer. 
The song is in Act i. Scene 2. 

Chapter III. 31. my friends', etc. : quoted from the Citizen of 
the World, Letter xxvii. hero of La Mancha : Don Quixote. 

32. My dear mother : in this letter do you see any similarity be- 
tween Goldsmith and Irving's Bip van Winkle 9 

34. a stout oak stick : do you recall any similar incident in The 
Vicar of Wakefield f 

35. poet-errant: cf. "knight-errant." 

Chapter IV. 36. A new consultation . . . among Goldsmith's 
friends : points his own irresponsibility. the Temple : originally a 



NOTES. 289 

lodge of the Knights Templars. It became the property of the crown 
in 1313 ; in 1346 it was leased to the students of law and became after- 
ward the residence of lawyers who formed themselves into "societies 
of the inns of court." fell in company at Dublin: any similar 
incident in 2%e Vicar of Wakefield 9 

37. To a Young Lady : what are the reasons Irving may have 
had for ridiculing this stanza ? Edinburgh : seat of the university 
of that name. 

38. added . . . his blessing : what similar incident in The Vicar 
of Wakefield 9 conjure : why is the word well chosen ? Edin- 
burgh was indeed a place of sore trial : so it proved for Burns, many 
of whose weaknesses are parallelled in Goldsmith's character. 

39. he was a prime favorite, etc. : has Irving succeeded in 
making him " a prime favorite " with the reader already ? His 
usual carelessness, etc. . . . At another of these meetings : of 
these two anecdotes, which is really of value in characterizing Gold- 
smith ? 

40. yet no dog, etc. : Goldsmith's grace was at times equal to his 
humor. tire you with a description : why is the description any- 
thing but tiresome ? 

42. An ugly and poor man : like Goldsmith himself. A humility 
that is almost touching. 

43. had the good sense to appreciate correctly : as Burns could 
not. like me more as a jester: whose fault was that? "At 
first," says he : Citizen of the World, Letter xxvii. 

44. They speak French : Latin was used in most universities 
then. Leyden : seat of a university in Holland. Albinus : 1697- 
1 7 70 ; a famous lecturer in anatomy and surgery in the university at 
Leyden. But I stop here : why ? 

45. only a vagabond: which of the two was Goldsmith in inten- 
tion •? In reality ? hoping all things, believing all things ? 
quoted from what ? little thinking : is it pleasing to have Irving 
anticipate the story ? 

Chapter Y. 46. was marched off ... to prison : not unlike 
Irving's experience in France. Cf. Life and Letters of Washington 
Irving, Vol. I, Chapters iv and v. dozing Strephon : a lover in 
Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia. 

47. There, hills and rocks : note the sharp antithesis here, 
rampire : an obsolete form of "rampart." 

49. Versailles : a town a few miles south of Paris. The seat of 



290 NOTES. 

the costly court palace of Louis XIV. Mademoiselle Clairon : a 
famous French actress of Goldsmith's time. 

50. prophetic eye of a poet : what does Irving mean, by the 
phrase ? acquaintance of Voltaire : read Macaulay's portrait of 
Voltaire, in his Essay on Addison. Fontenelle : 1657-1757 ; a 
French philosopher. Diderot: 1713-1784; a French philosopher. 
Editor of the Encyclopedie, the purpose of which was to exalt scien- 
tific research. 

51. mongrel gentleman : why is the phrase so expressive ? 

52. At Padua : no record there of the conferring of a degree upon 
Goldsmith, 

53. both sides of the picture : meaning ? 

Chapter VI. 54. get to London : in a similar plight had many 
English v/riters — Shakespeare, Johnson, Burke — made their way to 
the capital. 

55. The clock: Citizen of the World., Letter cxvii. Poor 
houseless creatures : the generosity of his soul pities those who are 
in the same condition as himself. 

56. In the Vicar : Chapter xx. Newgate : the London prison, 
near St. Paul's. 

57. Southwark : the district of London on the right bank of the 
Thames, in the southern part of the city. doing very well : his 
pride is equal to his independence. Samuel Richardson : 1689- 
1761; "the father of the English novel." Dr. Young: 1681-1765 ; 
an English poet made famous by the poem here alluded to. 

58. yEsculapius: the god of medicine. Garrick (David): 1717- 
1779 ; famous English actor ; member of Dr. Johnson's Club, which 
met at "The Cheshire Cheese." 

59. the written mountains : the so-called Sinaitic inscriptions on 
the rocks about Mt. Sinai. These in Goldsmith's day were thought to 
be of historical importance. A suggestion here of Addison's desire 
to measure the pyramids ; see Spectator., No. 1. 

Chapter VII. 60. You had better, etc.: notice that half the 
charm of Irving's use of the anecdote lies in the natural abruptness 
with which it is introduced. Monthly Review, . . . Critical 

Review: two of the periodicals which marked the beginning of party 
literature in England. Smollett: 1721-1771. Richardson, Field- 
ing, and Smollett were the makers of the modern novel. Smollett's 
greatest work, Boderick Bandom, was published about twenty years 
before The Vicar of Wakefield. 



NOTES. 291 

61. Dryden : 1631-1700 ; the greatest poet of the Restoration 
period. Called, in his favorite haunt of Will's Coffee-house, "Glorious 
John." Otway: 1652-1685; author of two pathetic tragedies. The 
Orphan and Venice Preserved. 

62. literary hack : a literary drudge hired to write upon demand. 
Cf. the expression "hack-horse." 

Chapter YIII. 63. Mr. John Newbery: 1713-1767 ; part author 
of Goody Two Shoes and The Travels of Tommy Trip. His son pub- 
lished The Vicar of Wakefield. Goldsmith refers there (Chapter 
xviii) to the former as "the philanthropic bookseller." 

64. coffee-houses : read chapter on coffee-houses in Ashton's 
Social Life in the Beign of Queen Anne. 

65. We reproach him for living by his wit : consider the change 
in the social standing of authors which has come about in the last two 
centuries. 

67. maladie du pais: homesickness. Usher: 1580-1656; a 
great scholar and Primate of Ireland ; the discoverer of the manu- 
script of Csedmon's poems as printed by Junius in 1650. Johnny 
Armstrong's Last Good-night: the ballad of the hanging of the 
marauder may be found in Gummere's Old English Ballads. 

68. from the blue bed to the brown : this expression is used ver- 
batim in The Vicar of Wakefield, Chapter i. Mohammed shall 
go to the mountain : Mohammed told his people he would call a 
mountain to him and offer prayer from the top of it before them all. 
The people came together, and Mohammed again and again in vain 
called the mountain to come to him. But he, nothing abashed, said, 
' ' If the mountain will not come to Mohammed, Mohammed will 
go to the mountain." 

Chapter IX. 68. the Bee : it appeared October 6, 1759. Eight 
weekly numbers only were published. 

69. Raleigh : refers to his threat to burn his History of the World 
because it sold slowly. Grub Street : now calhed Milton Street ; for 
many years the abode of hack writers. literati : plural of literatus, 
rarely used in the singular. 

74. Butler (Samuel) : 1612-1680 ; a poet of the Restoration ; 
author of Hudibras. Newton (Isaac) : 1642-1727 ; the great 
scientist of the Restoration ; discoverer of the laws of gravitation. 
His greatest work was the Principia. Swift: 1667-1745; the 
keenest satirist among the "Queen Anne's men"; author of Gulli- 
ver''s Travels. 



292 NOTES. 

Chapter X. 75. Coromandel : the eastern coast of India. His 
imagination was ... on fire : characteristic sanguineness. urg- 
ing the importance, etc. : a possible reason why Goldsmitli had so 
few friends. 

76. Old Bailey : the principal court of London. 

77. Surgeons' Hall: the record there bears this entry: "James 
Bernard, mate to hospital : Oliver Goldsmith, found not qualified for 
same." 

78. The following letter : what is admirable in the letter ? What 
is pitiable ? How does Irving defend Goldsmith here ? Do you think 
Irving is too lenient in his judgments ? 

80. in 1820 : Irving was in London at that time, so the reminis- 
cence may be a personal one. Rev. Thomas Percy: 1729-1811; 
editor of Beliques of Ancient English Poetry^ published in 1765. 

81. Goldsmith's picture of the lodgings of Beau Tibbs : in 
Citizen of the Worlds Letter iv. 

82. Just as we entered, etc. : from Tales of a Traveller. two 
hundred and fifty books : the Inquiry into Polite Learning. 

84. How delusive, how destructive : cf. the philosophizing of Dr. 
Primrose in The Vicar of Wakefield. Just sit down as I do, etc. : 
find an example before this of a letter written according to that rule. 
Is there any drawback in such advice ? 

85. The window, etc. : this projected poem was never finished. 
the twelve rules: ascribed to Charles I. They were: "Urge no 
healths ; Profane no divine ordinances ; Touch no state matters ; Re- 
veal no secrets ; Pick no quarrels ; Make no comparisons ; Maintain 
no ill opinions ; Keep no bad company ; Encourage no vice ; Make no 
long meals ; Repeat no grievances; Lay no wagers." 

Chapter XL 87. Inquiry into the Present State of Polite Learn- 
ing : part of its importance is due to the fact that it was one of the 
first of English critical writings. 

89. Ishmaelites : outcasts. " Ishmael's hand will be against every 
man, and every man's hand against him " (Genesis xvi, 12). Dream- 
ing of genius, etc. : from The Pace, by Cuthbert Shaw. Should 
Irving tell so fully the career of Kenrick ? St. John's Gate : a 
relic of an old priory of the Knights of St. John. It stands near the 
Charterhouse on St. John's Lane. 

90. David Garrick : to Garrick we owe the restoration of the most 
authentic text of Shakespeare's plays for the stage. Walpole 
(Horace) : 1717-1797. Walpole's Letters retail with fascinating de- 



NOTES. 293 

tail all the literary gossip of those days. Author also of one of the 
earliest English novels, The Castle of Otranto. the ' Provoked 
Husband ' : begun by Vanbrugh (1666-1726) and completed by 
Colley Gibber (1671-1757). 

91. a wit and a witch : the Anglo-Saxon word, witega. had 
only spoken what he believed to be the truth : characteristic lack 
of tact on Goldsmith's part. 

92. Hume : 1711-1776 ; the philosopher-historian of the time ; 
author of History of England and many works on philosophy. 
Temple Bar : a former gateway near the Temple, built by Wren, and 
removed in 1878. a candid disputant : hardly the same credit is 
given to Goldsmith by Boswell, in his Life of Samuel Johnson. 

Does Irving seem garrulous anywhere in this chapter ? 

Chapter XII. 93. Guthrie : the modest author of A History oj 
the World from the Creation to the Present Time. Murphy: 1727- 
1805 ; an actor and playwright. Christopher Smart : 1722-1771 ; 
the most pathetic figure of all the Grub Street company, who, to get a 
living, " leased himself " to a monthly journal for ninety-nine years. 
Isaac Bickerstaff : 1735-1812 ; an Irish playwright, author of several 
popular comedies. A real character, not to be confounded with 
Swift's pseudonym of " Bickerstaff." 

94. became personally acquainted with Dr. Johnson : in the fol- 
lowing paragraphs, notice the balanced construction which Irving so 
naturally uses in describing such opposite characters. 

95. Savage: 1698 (?)-1743 ; author of a poem named TJie Wan- 
derer., which may have been the prototype of The Traveller. 

96. The Great Cham : title of the Prince of Tartary. 

97. Churchill's Rosciad : a satire on the plays of the day ; takes 
its name from Roscius, a famous Roman comedian, who died about 
62 B.C. Ursa Major : what other nicknames of Johnson's are given 
in this chapter ? Steevens : 1736-1800 ; a critic of Shakespeare and 
reviewer of contemporary authors. Warburton (William) : 1698- 
1779 ; a writer on religious subjects ; also published an edition of 
Shakespeare's works, prior to Johnson's edition. Aristophanes : 
the great Greek writer of comedy ; author of The Clouds and The 
Frogs. 

Chapter XIII. 98. Thus, in Siberian Tartary : frcyn Citizen 
of the World., Letter cviii. 

99. Aleppo : a district of Asiatic Turkey. The capital bears the 



294 NOTES. 

same name. Beau Nash : 1674-1761 ; an English leader of fash- 
ion ; sometimes called the " King of Bath." 

100. White Conduit House: in Islington ; an attractive resort 
for Londoners' excursions. 

101. Rapin : 1661-1725 ; a French historian. Carte : 1686- 
1754 ; an English historian. Kennet : 1660-1728 ; an English 
bishop ; author of A Compleat History of England. Lord Chester- 
field : 1694-1773 ; author of the famous Letters to his son. Lord 
Orrery: 1707-1762; author of letters on, the life and writings of 
Swift. Lord Lyttelton : 1709-1773; 2iVit\\or oi Letters from a Per- 
sian in England to his Friend in Ispahan. Patron of letters who 
supported Fielding while he was writing Tom Jones. 

Chapter XIV. 105. Hogarth : 1697-1764 ; the most important 
painter of " picture dramas " of his day. Irving calls him, " the mor- 
alist and philosopher of the pencil." 

106. Sir Joshua Reynolds : 1728-1792 ; the great portrait painter ; 
author of Discourses on Painting. He painted the finest portrait of 
Goldsmith. style in writing is what color is in painting : can 
you explain and illustrate ? Name any poet whose love for color is 
evident in his choice of words. Is Irving a lover of color ? Does 
any passage so far illustrate this ? 

110. Lord Lansdowne : 1737-1805 ; author of several plays. 

111. the Rake's Progress : title of a series of pictures by Hogarth. 

Chapter XV. 114. Of all kinds of ambition : from the dedica- 
tion of The Traveller. 

118. twenty guineas : Goldsmith's ill-starred fate. 

Chapter XVI. 118. Nil te quaesiveris extra: "Ask nothing 
more." 

121. Edwin and Angelina : afterwards introduced into The Vicar 
of Wakefield (Chapter viii). 

Chapter XVII. 126. a popularity that has never flagged : is 
that true ? Nestor : the experienced patriarch whose judgments 
the Greeks regarded as infallible. 

127. how contradictory : is it really contradictory or natural ? 
The next morning, etc. : quoted from The Vicar of Wakefield, Chap- 
ter XXIV. 

129. Cento : a composition made up of selections from the works 



NOTES. 295 

of various authors. Dr. Percy himself confirmed the assertions of 
Goldsmith. 

Chapter XVIII. 133. he has fought, etc. : quoted from For- 
ster's Goldsmith. 

Irving has in this chapter a happy subject in the picturesque con- 
trast between Johnson and Goldsmith. Does one feel, after reading 
the chapter, as if conversation were indeed a lost art ? 

Chapter XIX. 138. the Jehu : see II Kings ix, 20. 

139. deserves particular mention : do you feel that Irving cum- 
bers his narrative with too many stories of unimportant people ? Do 
you think he did it because he knew that they succeeded equally well 
in sidetracking Goldsmith's attention ? Sterne : 1713-1768 ; author 
of Tristram Shandy. See note to page 60. 

140. Goldsmith, however, was guided : a generous excuse. How 
far is it justifiable ? The reader by this time must be aware how 
ardently Irving always defends his subject. rare Ben Jonson : 
1573(?)-1637 ; a contemporary of Shakespeare ; author of Every 
Man in his Humor. "O rare Ben Jonson" was the only epitaph 
placed upon his tomb. 

Chapter XX. 141. Irving must have related Johnson's report of 
his encounter with the king to throw some new light upon Goldsmith's 
character. What does it reveal ? 

143. Covent Garden : originally the convent garden of Westmin- 
ster. The theatre erected there in 1731 was built by Colman, Drury 
Lane: the theatre where Garrick began the Shakespeare revival in 

145. Wt^mjpPil : one of the least deserving of poets whom whim- 
sical fate ml^|Rlaureate. To choose him as a referee was indeed 
an insult to Goldsmith. Was either Goldsmith or Garrick in a position 
to criticise the other ? 

Chapter XXI. 146. bibliopole : a bookseller, especially one of 
rare and curious books. 

147. Islington : the resort also of Addison. It is supposed that 
the signature initial "I" of some of the Spectator Papers stood for 
Islington. 

148. Cockney Elysium : explain. Note Irving's aptness in coining 
epithets. Junius : the authorship of the Junius Letters was and 
still is a matter of conjecture. The most satisfactory investigation 



296 NOTES, 

points to Sir Philip Francis (1740-1818). Almost every writer of the 
day was accused in turn of the authorship. the pen of Goldsmith 
might be readily enlisted : in your judgment would Goldsmith have 
made a successful partisan writer ? One recognizes that even then 
the pen was " mightier than the sword." One smiles at the candor 
with which men of wealth assumed that they could hire genius. The 
Romanists a hundred years before would have paid anything to obtain 
Milton as their literary champion. 

Chapter XXII. 151. Goldsmith greeted him: with generosity 
that is a refreshing contrast to Garrick's pettiness. 

152. Talleyrand : 1754-1838 ; a famous French diplomat. 

Chapter XXIII. 154. miraculous draught: what is the allusion, 
suggested ? 

155. Blackstone's Commentaries : the authoritative work on Eng- 
lish law, published in 17G8. Burke refers to it in his Speech on Con- 
ciliation with America .• " I hear that they have sold nearly as many of 
Blackstone's Commentaries in America as in England." Hampton 
Court : fourteen miles from London, a distance hard to reconcile with 
the energy of the Goldsmith whom Irving has described for us. 

156. squaring his expenses according to his means : a contrast 
which points a criticism upon Goldsmith's extravagant habits. 

Is there any incident in this chapter that does not quite accord with 
Goldsmith's invariable kindness of spirit ? 

Chapter XXIV. 158. book-building: how different from book 
writing ? 

160. Much of that poem . . . was composed this summer: 

biographers of Goldsmith state that he always composed slowly, ten 
lines being considered by him as a good morning's work. 

161. At church, etc. : what do you think was the basis of the 
tenderness which Goldsmith felt for his brother ? and led the way : 
why is this italicized ? 

Chapter XXV. 162. ever the vagabond's friend : why ? Hif- 
fernan: why does Irving introduce this anecdote of Hiffernan ? 
Kenrick . . . Johnson (1709-1784) : which epigram is the better, — 
Kenrick's in verse or Johnson's in prose ? 

165. Angelica Kauffman : 1741-1807 ; a Swiss painter, from whom 
Reynolds generously acknowledged he had learned "some tricks of 
color." 



NOTES. 297 

166. the Jessamy Bride : a short novel, entitled The Jessamy 
Bride, written by Frankfort Moore, will add much to the student's 
enjoyment of Goldsmith and his contemporaries. 

Chapter XXVI. 168. Ranelagh, Vauxhall : places of amusement 
mentioned often in the Spectator Papers. A full account of them can 
be found in Austin Dobson's Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

169. Lucius Florus : second century a.d. Eutropius : fourth 
century A.D. Vertot: seventeenth century. What must one con- 
clude of the scope of Dr. Johnson's reading in the dialogue with Bos- 
well ? What qualifications had Goldsmith for an historian ? Can you 
name any historian attractive by his style, but imreliable in facts ? 

170. Pliny: 23-79 a.d.; the celebrated Roman naturalist. The 
only work he left was his Natural History. Buffon: 1707-1788', 
published his Natural History in 1749. He was the father of modern 
natural history. 

171. with the eye of a poet and moralist: what naturalists to-day 
are liable to the same criticism ? 

Chaptek XXYII. 174. Royal Academy of Arts : the society con- 
sists to-day of forty Royal Academicians, thirty Associates, and two 
Associate Engravers. To Mr. Maurice Goldsmith : what passages 
of this letter must make the reader smile ? 

178. Forsitan, etc.: "Perhaps our names shall one day be en- 
rolled with these." The reader may like to look ahead to the fulfil- 
ment of this prophecy in Johnson's epitaph upon Goldsmith, placed 
in Westminster Abbey. See Chapter xlv. 

Chapter XXVIII. 178. had not excited : why had it not ? 

179. we see nothing in it incompatible, etc. : do you, even if 
Irving did not ? fond pictures of early friends : Goldsmith's 
Traveller and The Deserted Village mark a stride in the love of 
nature in English poetry. He does not use natural scenes to point a 
moral or to arouse sober reflections on human life ; but he paints their 
beauties because he personally loves them. 

183. like that discovered in Gay's: Gay's "Chair Poems," so 
called, were discovered in a secret drawer in a chair belonging to the 
poet. Auburn : it is difficult to say with any certitude that Gold- 
smith had Lissoy in mind when he was describing his "deserted vil- 
lage." Why confine the poet's pictures to one place, when all his life 
he had been receiving impressions from hundreds of places, all of 
which might together furnish hints for one ideal village ? Cf . Macau- 



298 NOTES. 

lay's words in his Essay on Goldsmith: "The village in its happiest 
days is a true English village. The village in its decay is an Irish 
village. Goldsmith had assuredly never seen in his native land such 
a rural paradise, such a seat of plenty, content, and tranquillity, as 
his Auburn. He had assuredly never seen in England all the inhab- 
itants turned out of their homes in one day and forced to emigrate in 
a body to America. The hamlet he had probably seen in Kent ; the 
ejectment he had probably seen in Munster ; but, by joining the two, 
he had produced something which never was and never will be seen in 
any part of the world." 

Chapter XXIX. 186. Parnell (Thomas) : 1679-1718 ; an Irish 
poet, educated at Trinity. 

187. perception of wit, but none of humor : what is the difference 
between wit and humor ? 

Chapter XXX. 193. Lord Bolingbroke : 1678-1781; an unprin- 
cipled political partisan. a Capua to the poet : the luxury of 
Capua proved to be disastrous to the soldiers of Hannibal after they 
had been welcomed within its gates. 

Chapter XXXI. 196. Chatterton (Thomas) : 1752-1770 ; the 

marvellous boy poet, who wrote the Rowley poems when he was six- 
teen. Look up some account of his life and pathetic death. Ossian : 
Macpherson (1736-1796), a Scotchman, published Fingal as a transla- 
tion from Ossian, an early Gallic bard. The poem is considered by 
many a hoax, but Macpherson gained the honor of burial in West- 
minster. Horace Walpole : see note to page 90. 

199. has kept its ground : has it, down to the present time ? 

Chapter XXXII. 200. Bunbury : if the student has already read 
Carlyle's Essay on Burns, he will remember an anecdote told there of 
the sympathy evoked from Burn§ when he saw one of Bunbury's 
prints of a mourning mother and child. 

Chapter XXXIII. 203. Prince Eugene : 1663-1736 ; with Marl- 
borough, a leading general in the War of the Spanish Succession. He 
took Belgrade in 1717, from the Turks. Jacobite tendencies : the 
Jacobites were the adherents of James II after he abdicated the 
throne, and of his descendants. 

204. preux chevalier : gallant knight. 

206. argumentum ad hominem : bringing an argument to a per- 



NOTES, 299 

sonal application. Malplaquet: the scene of the great victory of 
the allied English, Dutch, and Austrian forces under the Duke of 
Marlborough and Prince Eugene, over the French under Villars. 

207. the Cock-lane Ghost: a great mystery in London in 1762. 
The rapping of a certain Parson's daughter was called the announce- 
ment by the spirits that one Kent, Parson's enemy, had killed a 
woman in that house. Macaulay says Johnson believed in the trick. 

Chapter XXXIV. 207. Voltaire : 1694-1778 ; the most brilliant 
of the French writers ; author of histories, philosophies, dramas, -and 
essays. 

209. Boileau: 1636-1711; French critic and poet. Haec studia, 
etc. : " These studies are our companions in the night, in our travels, 
in the country." 

The contrast between Goldsmith the patronized and Goldsmith 
the patron is well brought out by these incidents of Craddock and 
McDonnell. 

211. the Lusiad : the song of the Lusians; the national epic of 
Portugal, written by Camveus. Hugh Boyd : once credited with 
the authorship of the Junius Letters. Sir William Chambers: 
1726-1796; a famous architect. 

Chapter XXXV. 215. Mrs. Thrale : a talented London woman 
of whose house Johnson was an inmate for many years. She pub- 
lished Anecdotes of Johnson, in 1786, and Letters of Johnson, in 
1788. Mrs. Vesey : a select London society met at her house every 
Tuesday, where in the evening they were joined by the Turk's Head 
Club. Mrs. Montagu : a social leader and an author. Johnson 
said of her, " Mrs. Montague is a very extraordinary woman ; she has 
a constant stream of conversation and it is always impregnated ; it 
has always meaning." weary heart: do you think Irving's sympa- 
thy for Goldsmith is always justifiable ? 

216. the alleged vanity : has Irving succeeded in making us believe 
that Goldsmith's vanity and self -consciousness can only be alleged f 
being unwarrantable : do you think there was any malice in the joke ? 

217. where Boswell had made a fool of himself: the following 
appeared in the London Magazine, 1769, signed by Boswell : "Of the 
most remarkable masks upon the occasion was James Boswell, in the 
dress of an armed Corsican chief. He entered the amphitheatre about 
twelve o'clock. On the front of his cap was embroidered in gold let- 
ters, Viva la Liberta ; and on one side of it was a handsome blue 



300 NOTES. 

feather and cockade, so that it has an elegant, as well as a warlike, 
appearance ? He wore no mask, saying that it was not proper for a 
gallant Corsican. As soon as he came into the room, he drew universal 
attention." He had written a poem to recite, but no one in the crowd 
would listen to him. 

218. Scrub : man of all work to Lady Bountiful, in Farquhar's 
Beaux'' Stratagem. His duties were as follows: "On a Monday I 
drive the coach ; of a Tuesday I drive the plough ; of a Wednesday I 
follow the hounds ; of a Thursday I dun the tenants ; on Friday I go 
to market; on Saturday I draw warrants; and on Sunday I draw 
beer." On all days he was " consumedly in love." Malagrida: an 
Italian priest, burned as a heretic in 1761 at Lisbon. a picture of 
Goldsmith's whole life : just what did Walpole mean ? 

220. Baretti: 1719-1789; an Italian scholar who translated some 
of Johnson's writings into Italian and who assisted him in preparing 
the Dictionary. 

222. the Pantheon : a music hall of low repute. 

Chapter XXXVI. 223. loo : a popular game of cards in those 
days. The poem quoted here is only one of Goldsmith's happy hits in 
the making of occasional verse. Who was our great American occa- 
sional poet ? What are the requisites of such verse ? It may be 
interesting here to read Irving's Christmas stories, remembering that 
he is credited with introducing Christmas into our literature. 

227. the lord of misrule : his reign extended from All-Hallow's 
Eve, October 31, to Candlemas Day, February 2. All these weeks 
were reckoned in the feast of Christmas. 

What makes the perfection of the last paragraph of the chapter ? 

Chapter XXXVII. 230. All the world, etc. : the contrast between 
this and the reception given to She Stoops to Conquer is, in the light 
of subsequent years, most amusing to us. 

231. the son of Hystaspes : Darius I. He was one of the seven 
who agreed to dethrone the king and place one of their number in his 
place. They agreed to meet outside the city in the morning, and he 
whose horse should neigh first should be king. By an artful con- 
trivance of his groom, at the rising of the sun the horse of Darius 
neighed before all the others. The story is told by Herodotus. 

234. Ride, si sapis : " Laugh, if you are wise." 

235. a loser : Goldsmith received only about five hundred pounds 
from his benefit nights, and a small fee for the publication of the play 



NOTES. 301 

in book form. I know of no comedy, etc. : is Johnson's definition 
of comedy an adequate one ? Would it fit the comedies of Shake- 
speare ? Test The Merchant of Venice by his requirement. 

Have we anything in current literature which corresponds to these 
newspaper squibs in Johnson's time ? 

Chapter XXXVIII. 236. Vous vous noyez par vanite : "You 
harm yourself by your vanity." 

237 . Brise le miroir, etc. : ' ' Break the faithless mirror which 
conceals from you the truth." 

239. Is Goldsmith's answer in any way a vindication of the attack 
made upon him ? 

Chapter XXXIX. 240. Holy- Week : the week preceding Easter 
Sunday. Miss Burney : Frances Burney (1752-1840), author of 
Evelina and Diary and Letters of Madam D''Arhlay. She contributed 
many anecdotes of Johnson to Boswell's biography. 

241. Why, sir, etc. : which of these two replies of Dr. Johnson to 
Boswell is the truer estimate of Goldsmith ? On the 13th of April, 
etc. : does this paragraph really contribute anything to the chapter ? 

242. Paoli : 1725-1807 ; the head of the Corsican government 
while it was at war with Genoa. 

243. he should write so as he may live by them, etc. : was this a 
direct thrust at Goldsmith. Can you see in this conversation why the 
great Dictator was so attracted to " Goldie " ? 

247. pilgarlick : a forsaken wretch, or merely a vague term of 
reproach. 

Carlyle, in his Essay on Johnson^ has defended Boswell as follows : 
"The man had an ' open sense,' an open loving heart, which so few 
have : where excellence existed, he was compelled to acknowledge it ; 
was drawn towards it, and . . . could not but walk with it, — if not 
as superior, if not as equal, then as inferior and lackey ; better so than 
not at all. . . . Consider what an inward impulse there must have 
been, how many mountains of impediment hurled aside, before the 
Scottish Laird could, as humble servant, embrace the knees ... of 
the English Dominie ! . . . And now behold the worthy Bozzy, so 
prepossessed and held back by nature and by art, fly nevertheless like 
iron to its magnet, whither his better genius called ! " Read, if pos- 
sible, Macaulay's estimate of Boswell in his Essay on Johnson. Could 
Irving have found two better foils, although so different, to set off the 
character of Goldsmith, than Johnson and Boswell ? 



302 NOTES. 

Chapter XL. 249. Lord Charlemont : 1728-1799; an Irish 
statesman. 

250. ex cathedra : "from the chair," i.e. with authority. 

251. Launcelot Gobbo : it was not Launcelot in The Merchant of 
Venice^ but Launce in The Two Gentlemen of Verona^ who delivered 
the famous charge to his dog. See Act ii, Scene 3. 

From tliis chapter we see that Goldsmitli was not the only butt 
of the jokes of the Club. Recognition of this fact modifies to some 
degree the ridiculous pictures given of Goldsmith's foibles. 

Chapter XLL 252. Bennet Langton : 1737-1801 ; see Chapter 
XIV, page 109. 

255. jeux d'esprit : sparkles of wit. 

Chapter XLII. 256. Dr. Burney : father of Fanny Burney. 

258. sturdy independence : was it that or the " heedlessness with 
which he conducted his literary undertakings " that lost him the 
pension ? 

259. It was all . . . set down to shper envy and uncharitable- 
ness : what characteristic of Goldsmith made this judgment seem fair 
to those who made it ? 

260. Beattie and his book will be forgotten, . . . while Vol- 
taire's fame will last forever : a true prophecy. Was it cool judg- 
ment or irritation that led Goldsmith to stumble into the criticism ? 

Chapter XLIII. 261. Ugolino : died 1289 ; he deserted his 
native city, Pisa, in the war with Genoa, in 1284. Later he was pun- 
ished by starvation. Dante tells the story in his Inferno. The picture 
is said to have been painted without any thought of Ugolino ; but 
either Goldsmith or Burke, on seeing it, remarked the similarity 
between the painting and Dante's description, whereupon Sir Joshua 
gave it that name. 

265. my honest little man : was this borrowing of Goldsmith's an 
honest deed ? How would he have excused it in his own eyes ? How 
may we excuse it ? 

Chapter XLIV. 265. Scarron : 1610-1660 ; a French writer of 
burlesque of the seventeenth century. 

268. Woodfall : the printer of the Junius Letters. be-Ros- 

ciused : see note to page 97, on Rosciad. Bens : an allusion to 

Ben Jonson, referring in its plural form, doubtless, to those friends of 
his who gathered at the Mermaid Tavern when the Elizabethan drama 



NOTES. 303 

was at its height. Here, Hermes : cf. with these lines of Garrick's, 
the following from Lowell's Fable for Critics. Have the latter any 
phrases or lines suggestive of the former ? 

" What ! Irving ? thrice welcome, warm heart and fine brain, 
You bring back the happiest spirit from Spam, 
And the gravest sweet humor that ever were there 
Since Cervantes met death in his gentle despair ; 
Nay, don't be embarrassed, nor look so beseeching, — 
I shan't run directly against my own preaching. 
And, having just laughed at their Raphaels and Dantes, 
Go to setting you up beside matchless Cervantes ; 
But allow me to speak what 1 honestly feel, — 
To a true poet-heart add the fun of Dick Steele, 
Throw in all of Addison, minus the chill, 
With the whole of that partnership's stock and good- will, 
Mix well, and, while stirring, hum o'er as a spell, 
The fine-oZd English Gentleman, simmer it well. 
Sweeten just to your own private liking, then strain, 
That only the finest and clearest remain, 
Let it stand out of doors till a soul it receives 
From the warm lazy sun loitering down through green leaves. 
And you'll find a choice nature, not wholly deserving 
A name either English or Yankee, — just Irving." 

270. shifted his trumpet : in his later years Sir Joshua Reynolds 
was deaf. Charles Fox : 1749-1806 ; a prominent statesman at the 
time of the American Revolution. 

272. Hazlitt (William) : 1778-1830 ; an English essayist. 

273. Ninon de I'Enclos : 1616-1706 ; a French woman, famous 
for her wit and beauty even to old age. The Jessamy Bride : why 
do you think Irving had so much sentiment for the story of Goldsmith 
and the Jessamy Bride ? 

Chapter XLV. 277. fairy gifts : notice how well Irving keeps 
up the figure of the ' ' fairy gifts ' ' throughout the chapter, thus giving 
a unity to his " desultory remarks." 

282. We shall conclude : do you like Irving's concluding 
paragraph ? 

How can you summarize Irving's attitude toward Goldsmith ? Can 
you see any specific reasons why Irving is sometimes called the 
"American Goldsmith" ? 



SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS AND TOPICS. 



Chapters I and IL — Topic for discussion : Goldsmith's Prepara- 
tion for Life. 

Why are the early years of a biography sure to be interesting? 
Why do biographers always lay special stress upon these early years ? 
What do anecdotes and quotations add to these chapters ? Is Irving 
trying to enumerate facts or to portray a personality here ? Does any 
other personality than that of Goldsmith become apparent in these 
chapters ? How does Irving avoid intruding himself into his account 
of Goldsmith's boyhood ? What do you consider the chief duty of a 
biographer? Read the first five paragraphs of Carlyle's Essay on 
Burns and decide, as you read, if Irving lives up to the standard there 
given. Is the modern biography, compiled almost entirely from a 
man's diary and writings and letters, always the most impartial one ? 
Does Irving's opening paragraph describe the style of any one else 
than Goldsmith ? 

Chapter III. — What is Irving's object in introducing Goldsmith's 
letters here ? In Goldsmith's letter to his mother, do you detect any 
similarities between his wit and Irving's ? Has Irving elsewhere 
depicted any characters with the same qualities which he attributes 
to Goldsmith ? Why was Goldsmith a good letter writer ? Why is 
letter writing a lost art to-day ? Characterize Irving's humor by four 
or five adjectives. 

Chapter IV. — Topic for discussion : The Sad Side of Goldsmith's 
Days. 

What makes up the humor of Goldsmith's letter to Bryanton ? 
Read the letter aloud to somebody, as a test of its power to amuse. 

Chapter V. — What paragraph in this chapter shows best the 
happy-go-lucky Goldsmith ? Tally all of Goldsmith's experiences 
with those of George Primrose in The Vicar of Wakefield, Chapter 
XX. What, evidently, made the largest part of Goldsmith's literary 
capital ? 

304 



SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS AND TOPICS. 305 

Chapter VI. — What, in this cliapter, elicits genuine sympathy for 
Goldsmith ? 

Chapter VII. — What failings of genius do you discover portrayed 
in this chapter ? Can you name other writers who have had similar 
weaknesses ? Do you think that "genius is a law unto itself " ? 

Chapter VIII. — Topic for discussion : Contrast the Social Position 
of Authors in the Eighteenth and Twentieth Centuries. 

Chapter IX, — Judging from the personal characteristics of Gold- 
smith which appear in these letters, decide the following questions : 
Was he a flatterer for a purpose ? Was he self-conscious ? Had he 
too much self-pity ? Did he overestimate his own abilities ? Did he 
ever belittle them ? Why is he always accusing his friends of for- 
getting him ? What do you feel to be the greatest lack in the man ? 
Would you, as a friend to Goldsmith, have acknowledged the appeal 
in these letters ? 

Chapter X. — Topics for discussion: Goldsmith at Green-Arbor 
Court ; Goldsmith's Affection for his Own People. 

Chapter XI. — Discuss Goldsmith's first serious works, stating 
their names, the occasion of their writing, the history of their 
publication, the reasons for their success. 

Chapter XII. — What constitutes the charm of this chapter ? 
What anecdotes best portray Johnson for us ? Why are Johnson 
and Goldsmith together a delightful picture ? What attracted each 
to the other ? Was the friendship one-sided in the amount of benefit 
either derived from it ? 

■ Chapter XIII. — Notice how Johnson, Boswell, and Goldsmith 
set off one another's characteristics. Note that this biography is a 
portrayal not only of Goldsmith, but of most of the great men of his 
day. 

Chapter XIV. — Why does Irving delight so much in this subject 
of the Literary Club ? Compare with this Addison's description of the 
Spectator Club (Paper No. 2). Which is the better subject ? Why ? 
Which is the better description ? Why ? 

Chapter XV. — Topics for discussion : How The Vicar of Wake- 
field was given to the World ; Goldsmith's First Success as a Poet. 



306 SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS AND TOPICS. 

Chapter XVI. — Topic for discussion: The Sad Tale of the Be- 
ginning and the End of Dr. Goldsmith. 

Chapter XVII. — After reading this chapter, discuss the character 
of Goldsmith's times, under the following heads : the position of pub- 
lishers ; the jealousies among writers ; the character of the drama of 
the Augustan Age. Was Goldsmith's idea of a comedy the correct 
one? 

Chapter XVIII. — Do you think Irving enjoyed writing this chap- 
ter ? Give the reasons for your answer. Do you think conversation 
is a lost art in these days ? 

Chapter XIX. — Topic for discussion : The Sources of Goldsmith's 
Literary Material. 

Chapter XX. — Topics for discussion: The Launching of TJie 
Good-natured Man; The Literary Dictator of London and his King. 

Chapter XXL — Topic for discussion ; The Dependence and Inde- 
pendence of a Half-successful Writer. 

Chapter XXII. — Topic for discussion: Intrigues of Writers in 
the Eighteenth Century. 

Chapter XXIII. —Topic for discussion: The "Pound Foolish" 
Goldsmith. 

Chapter XXIV. — Specify exactly what this chapter contributes 
to your impression of Goldsmith. 

Chapter XXV. — Topics for discussion : Purple and Fine Linen; 
The Jessamy Bride. 

Chapter XXVI. — Topics for discussion : An Imaginary Conver- 
sation between Goldsmith and John Burroughs ; Goldsmith's Version 
of " The Spider and the Fly." 

Chapter XXVII. — Write Maurice Goldsmith's answer to Oliver's 
Letter. 

Chapter XXVIII. —Eead The Deserted Village. What new 
characteristics of Goldsmith do you feel in the lines ? Do you think 
Goldsmith ever saw Auburn ? 

Chapter XXIX. — Topics for discussion : The Discontented Trav- 
eller ; Hickey's Joke and Goldsmith's Ketaliation. 

Chapter XXX. — Topic for discussion : An Absent-minded Poet. 



SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS AND TOPICS. 307 

Chaptek XXXI. — Look up some account of Chatterton and his 
work (see the article in Encyclopaedia Britannica). How does the 
personality of Goldsmith show in his judgment of the boy poet ? 

Chapter XXXII. — Topic for discussion : Goldsmith on a Vaca- 
tion. 

Chapter XXXIII. — Discuss, under the following heads, the value 
of anecdotes as used in this biography : their value in portraying the 
character of the subject ; their value in portraying the character of 
his times ; their value in portraying his contemporaries ; the atmos- 
phere they contribute to the biography ; their intrinsic interest. 
Johnson said upon this point, "The business of a biographer is to 
give a complete account of the person whose life he is writing, and 
to discriminate him from all other persons by any peculiarities of char- 
acter or sentiment he may happen to have." 

Chapter XXXIV. t- Topic for discussion : Goldsmith in the 
Country. 

Chapter XXXV. — Topic for discussion : Goldsmith as a Musician 
(recall information on this topic from previous chapters). 

Chapter XXXVT. — Topic for discussion : Goldsmith, the Genius 
of Trivialities. 

Chapter XXXVII. — What were the influences which could make 
or mar a drama in Goldsmith's time ? 

Chapter XXXVIII. — What specific incidents in the book, so far, 
have thrown light upon the literary rivalries of Goldsmith's age ? Was 
the life of an author then more or less public than now ? more or less 
interesting ? more or less adventuresome ? What advantages has the 
modern author lost ? What advantages has he gained ? 

Chapter XXXIX. — Do you think this chapter is an unnecessary 
repetition of the points made in Chapters XII and XIII ? Would 
you be willing to cut the chapter out of the book? Give reasons for 
your answer. Do you think Irving expresses enough of his debt to 
Boswell for many of his stories of Dr. Johnson and the Club ? 

Chapter XL. — Topic for discussion : The Vanity of Dr. Johnson. 

Chapter XLI. — What is your opinion of Boswell ? Do you think 
that Goldsmith derived from Dr. Johnson's companionship a pleasure 
commensurable with the accompanying discomforts? Is Goldsmith 



308 SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS AND TOPICS, 

belittled in your mind by these stories of Bos well's ? Cite one or two 
instances where, in spite of a silenced tongue, Goldsmith seems superior 
to Dr. Johnson. 

Chapter XLII. — Does Irving show Goldsmith in an enviable light 
here ? Do you think his purpose is to be just in showing the unattrac- 
tive side of Goldsmith's personality with the attractive, or is it to throw 
light upon the misunderstandings on the part of his friends under 
which Goldsmith often labored? 

Chapter XLIII. — What in this chapter shows more plainly than 

any other section of the bool: Irving's true sympathy for Goldsmith ? 
Consider what treatment this incident of borrowing from Garrick 
might have received from an unsympathetic biographer. 

Chapter XLIV. — Topics for discussion : The Poet's Last "Blaze 
of Imagination " ; The Pathos of Goldsmith's One Love Story. 

Chapter XLV. — Discuss the quotation from Sir Walter Scott, 
remembering the "sorrow, sickness, or pressure of unfortunate cir- 
cumstances" under* which the following wrote : Dante, Milton, Pope, 
Stevenson, Poe, Longfellow, Bryant. Can you state the afdiction in 
each of these cases and give the title of the work which was brought 
forth under it ? Can you name other similar cases ? 

Chapter XLVI. — Discuss Irving's summary of the causes of Gold- 
smith's successes and failures. 



OCT 4 19U4 



